Highlander Partners

Highlander Partners

Highlander Partners was formed in 2004 by Laurence E. Hirsch, who served as CEO of Centex Corporation from 1988 to 2004. The firm invests the Hirsch family’s capital alongside that of its own partners — no third-party limited partners participate. That structure gives Highlander permanent flexibility: it can hold assets indefinitely, use minimal leverage relative to its peers, and ignore fixed-mandate constraints that shape traditional fund managers. The strategy targets majority control investments in mid-market businesses operating in consumer products, manufacturing, business services, and select technology sub-sectors. Sectors with a durable operating history and strong free-cash-flow characteristics are prioritized. Recent or current holdings include Ergobaby, a global juvenile-products platform acquired in 2024, Tapatío hot sauce, the clean-beauty brand RMS Beauty, and the defense-technology company DZYNE Technologies. The firm regularly builds platforms through sequential add-on acquisitions — Biamp Systems, a pro-audio-visual company, closed six sub-acquisitions following its initial 2017 purchase. Geographically, deal teams operate from three offices: Dallas for North American mandates, and Warsaw and Bucharest for Central and Eastern Europe. Highlander reports more than $3.0 billion in assets under management and has executed transactions exceeding $5.0 billion in total enterprise value since inception. The firm employs roughly 40 professionals, including a dedicated Central and Eastern Europe team led by Chairman Stewart Baseley and Managing Partner Artur Dzagarow. In September 2020, the firm acquired the wellness holding company Balanced Nutritionals and exited it in February 2024, while in January 2026 it announced the acquisition of Tapatío hot sauce, extending a long pattern of making branded consumer investments. Outside investment activity, Hirsch sits on the board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the family operates the Hirsch Family Foundation. Highlander’s architecture functions as a hybrid between a single-family office and an institutional private equity firm — it deploys patient, proprietary capital but competes directly with committed-capital funds in negotiated control transactions. That eliminates the distribution-pressure cycle that defines most private-fund GPs and ties portfolio strategy to a single family’s multi-generational wealth horizon rather than a fund-level IRR calculation.