What kind of loans do you make and to whom?
We provide growth capital financing to leading lower-middle-market companies, especially businesses with expanding global operations. We invest in all levels of a company’s capital structure – from senior debt to common equity.
What can you do that a bank can’t?
We have flexibility and a greater variety of capital, from senior secured unitranche credit facilities to mezzanine capital term loans to equity co-investment participation.
What can banks do that you wish you could?
Banks can access capital at low cost from federal government institutions, given their depository business model. They can then translate these cost savings to the borrower. With this model, however, come highly regulated and restrictive lending practices.
What has been the biggest change in the lending industry since the financial crisis?
Consolidation and increased federal regulation has led to severe contraction in lending practices, restricting banks to primarily highly conservative asset-based lending formulas. This has almost eliminated the ability of banks to stretch into lending against the enterprise value of a business based on historical cash flows.
Has that helped or hurt you and other nonbank lenders?
It has certainly opened up opportunities for specialty finance companies and nonbank capital providers to fill the lending gap.
What’s the best advice you ever got?
My boss and mentor Avram Miller taught me that a professional’s commitment to integrity is tested most when he or she is faced with adverse situations and difficult decisions. Integrity, if real, is consistent in both good and bad times, and is indispensable in building trusted relationships that will serve you throughout your entire career.
What’s something your colleagues don’t know about you?
Very few people know that when I was younger I had serious ambitions to become a professional soccer player. I even relocated to Italy and was playing for various professional clubs in Milan, but injury ended that aspiration.
SAIF MANSOUR, 35
Managing Partner,
Breakwater Investment Management, Century City
RESIDENCE: Santa Monica
FAMILY: Married to Lauren
ACTIVITIES: Staying active, enjoying restaurants. Volunteering for Generation Conservation, Worldwide Orphans Foundation and Posse Foundation-Los Angeles.
