Serengeti Asset Management

Jody LaNasa is the founder and managing partner, and he leads the investment process alongside a senior team that includes Ray Yousefian as Senior Managing Director. The firm’s credit and special-situations mandates are executed collaboratively. LaNasa’s investment framework traces back to his tenure running the Multi-Strategy Investing Business for Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group.

Serengeti relies on relationships from its principals’ prior investment banking and asset management careers — LaNasa from Goldman Sachs, Yousefian from Morgan Stanley and Citi, and Eisenberg from Lazard — combined with niche structuring capability for technology and defense. The firm targets situations where the investment size or complexity falls outside the focus of large credit managers, often engaging directly with sponsor-backed companies or shareholders.

Neither. Serengeti is an asset manager that raises external capital for its private credit and special-situations strategies; it is not a family office. While it occasionally takes equity exposure through convertibles or preferred structures, it is not a venture capital firm — its core product is non-traditional debt financing for companies with specific capital needs.

In 2024, Serengeti and Kyle Bass’s firm, Hayman Capital Management, launched Rochefort Asset Management, a Serengeti-affiliated advisor. Rochefort is approved by the Department of Defense and the Small Business Administration to finance businesses critical to national and economic security. Jody LaNasa serves as Co-CEO alongside Hayman’s leadership, with Alexander L. Lemond as President.

The firm’s publicly available materials do not describe a dedicated philanthropic foundation or donor-advised fund. LaNasa’s advisory board service at Harvard Law School and Georgetown University does not appear to flow through a structured Serengeti-linked charitable entity, but the boundary between personal civic activity and firm assets is not disclosed.