Blue Helm Capital Management

Overview

Blue Helm Capital Management LP was established in 2017 by Liran Blum, who identified an opportunity to manage a union pension fund's capital with an entrepreneurial structure uncommon among Taft-Hartley plans. Instead of a conventional institutional advisory relationship, Blue Helm operates as the registered investment adviser to the Pension Fund of the Journeymen and Apprentices of Local Union No. 188 in Jacksonville, Florida, giving the firm discretionary authority over the plan's assets. The arrangement effectively creates a dedicated external management company for a single multiemployer plan. The strategy spans buyout, distressed debt, mezzanine, special situations, and venture capital, with a heavy tilt toward direct real estate. Blue Helm structures holdings through a series of single-purpose LLCs that the pension and the management company own alongside each other. Confirmed property holdings include a mixed-use asset at 4217 Louisiana, the Broadstone Lincoln residential community in Scottsdale, Arizona and a multifamily property on East 80th Street in Manhattan. Senior Portfolio Manager Richard Gaborow and Trader Andre Ikeda support the investment process, while Guilherme Guzzo De Decca serves as President and Chief Compliance Officer. The team remains small, consistent with the firm's function as a pension plan's internal investment office outsourced to a separate legal entity. The pension plan itself—the Journeymen and Apprentices of Local Union No. 188—was originally established in 1969 to provide retirement, disability, and death benefits to union members. Blum holds more than 75 percent ownership of the management company, placing strategic control firmly with the founding CIO. The structural differentiator is the separation of the investment management function from the pension trust. Most Taft-Hartley plans use a board of trustees and external consultants or fund managers. Blue Helm is the rare case where a single individual controls the investment discretion for a union pension through an external firm that also co-invests its own capital alongside the plan. This hybrid posture creates alignment between the manager and the beneficiaries, though it introduces key-person concentration around Blum.