Our team has a comprehensive skill set drawn from a variety of experiences at some of the world's best institutions:

Investing
We have extensive private equity investing experience at firms such as J.H. Whitney, TA Associates, Thomas H. Lee Partners, Parthenon Capital, Austin Ventures and The LBJ Holding Company. Collectively, we have invested approximately $140 million and produced returns of approximately $440 million. Approximately 80% of this $440 million has already been realized for our investors. These investments have earned top-decile returns for our investors and created significant wealth for many of our portfolio companies' management teams.

Financial Engineering
We have significant financial engineering skills and deep transactional experience from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston. This experience includes debt financings (senior and subordinated, long- and short-term, high-yield and investment grade), equity financings (IPOs and secondaries), asset financings and sales, recapitalizations and management buyouts.

Operations
We have significant CEO-level operating experience at small middle-market companies. We also have management consulting experience at McKinsey & Company and Booz Allen.

Family Businesses
We have decades of experience working with family-owned businesses and the estate, succession, tax, liquidity and diversification issues that these businesses entail.

Relationships
We have relationships with a wide variety of experts who can add value to our partner companies. These experts include lenders, executive recruiters, investment banks and consultants.

Mergers, Acquisitions & Exits
We have participated in a wide variety of exits, including sixteen over the past five years. Our exits include IPOs, mergers, company sales, buyouts and recapitalizations.

Many of our experiences are in the segment on which Blue Sage is focused--established, growing companies in the small middle market in the Southwest, primarily Texas and contiguous states. Indeed, each member of the team has deep roots in, and is a long-time resident of, the region.

At the same time, we also have experience with some of the world's best large companies. We believe that these experiences enable us to bring a valuable large-company perspective to our small middle-market companies.