Platinum Equity

Investment decisions are governed by an Investment Committee that includes Chairman and CEO Tom Gores, Co-Presidents Jacob Kotzubei and Louis Samson, and Partners Bryan Kelln, Johnny Lopez, Phil Norment, and Robert Wentworth. Kotzubei leads the Los Angeles and Asia teams while Samson leads the New York, Greenwich, and London teams, creating two distinct deal pipelines.

M&A&O is a trademarked methodology that merges traditional mergers and acquisitions with a proprietary in-house operations capability. Unlike firms that bring in external consultants post-close, Platinum embeds its own operations professionals—led by Partner Stephanie Barter—into due diligence from the start and continues that involvement throughout the hold period, directly managing transitions and performance improvement.

Platinum manages both private equity and credit strategies. The credit platform invests in the private and public debt of underperforming, undermanaged, or undervalued companies, primarily in North America, giving the firm a tool to participate in situations where an equity buyout is not the right structure.

The firm specializes in complex, resource-intensive transactions that many buyers avoid: corporate carve-outs from Fortune 500 companies, public-to-private takeovers, restructurings, turnarounds, and divestitures. This complexity filter is central to its sourcing—the operations team is designed to solve the integration problems these deals create.

Platinum splits investment leadership between two Co-Presidents: Jacob Kotzubei runs the Los Angeles headquarters team and the Asia investment team, while Louis Samson runs the New York/Greenwich and London teams. This dual-hub structure pairs a West Coast–Asia axis with an East Coast–Europe axis, each operating with its own deal origination and execution resources.

Platinum invests its own institutional capital raised through flagship private equity funds and its credit vehicles. It does not market itself as a fund-of-funds platform and typically invests directly into companies rather than committing to external GP funds, though the firm's small-cap strategy does involve dedicated fund vehicles raised from limited partners.

Stephanie Barter oversees the M&A Operations group that performs pre-acquisition due diligence, while Bryan Kelln leads Portfolio Operations, managing companies post-close. Together they run a more centralized operations function than most private equity firms, which reduces reliance on third-party advisors and creates a repeatable value-creation playbook.