FocusGrowth Asset Management

CEO John Lykouretzos leads the investment team alongside Partner Peter Bio and Principal Curtis Robbins. The firm's website describes a collaborative investment process backed by the leadership's combined institutional investing and cannabis operating experience, though it does not specify an investment committee structure or voting thresholds.

The firm cites its decade of hands-on industry experience and the reputational strength of its lending track record as the primary drivers of deal origination. Because federal illegality bars most traditional banks from cannabis lending, a limited number of specialty credit providers compete for mandates — FocusGrowth argues this compressed competitive set, combined with borrower and advisor relationships built across multiple refinancing cycles, produces differentiated access.

The mandate is overwhelmingly credit. The firm describes its capital as deployed 'predominantly across senior secured credit' and supplements that with selective equity co-investments and secondary bond purchases when it sees better risk-adjusted return profiles. Exact credit/equity split is not publicly broken out.

About $330 million of the $1.1 billion deployment figure represents third-party capital deployed alongside FocusGrowth in deals where it acted as lead or co-lead investor. The firm states outright that it does not manage or make investment decisions for that third-party capital, and that these assets are not included in its regulatory AUM (per the firm, Q1 2026).

FG Agency Lending LLC is a subsidiary of FocusGrowth Asset Management, LP that serves as administrative agent on syndicated term loans. It appeared in that role for the Jushi Holdings $160 million refinancing in March 2026, suggesting the firm uses a dedicated agency vehicle to structure its credit facilities.

The firm operates primarily in the United States across state-licensed cannabis markets. Its disclosed borrowers — Jushi, TerrAscend, Body and Mind — are all US-facing multi-state operators with footprints spanning cultivation, processing, and retail assets in markets such as New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, Utah, and Nevada.

The firm describes leveraging 'nearly half a century of combined institutional investing experience' alongside 'a decade of hands-on experience in the cannabis industry.' CEO John Lykouretzos has discussed the financing challenges of federally illegal markets and state-level regulatory complexity on industry podcasts, suggesting the founding thesis recognized a structural capital gap that conventional asset managers could not address.