Thomas Henley
LP
Thomas Henley’s career responsibilities have included making and managing private equity fund commitments, direct private equity investments, and performing a vast number of investment banking transactions. Mr. Henley was recently a Managing Director at Gray & Company where he led the Private Markets activities, and was a key member of the firm’s Investment Committee. Mr. Henley has worked in private equity for 15 years, previously working at Erasmus Capital; his responsibilities have included making and managing fund investment commitments and making direct private equity investments. He has committed over $6 billion to private equity funds across various sub-asset classes globally, and in excess of $2 billion of commitments to emerging manager funds. Mr. Henley has also invested over $250 million into over 50 companies on a direct private equity basis. His responsibilities have included all facets of the private equity fund evaluation and investment process, including due diligence, negotiation of legal documents and recommendations to Investment Committees and to clients. In his capacity as a direct private equity investor, Mr. Henley's responsibilities included all facets of the direct investment process including, sourcing new investment opportunities; negotiating and structuring transactions; performing due diligence; and providing strategic and value-added assistance to portfolio companies for attractive exits. He has also sat on numerous private equity Advisory Committees.
Mr. Henley’s private equity experience also includes being a Vice President of Bank of America Capital Investors, the private equity arm of Bank of America. Bank of America Capital Investors managed a $1 billion private equity fund, making growth and expansion capital investments, and leveraged investments in middle market companies. In that capacity, Mr. Henley's responsibilities included all facets of private equity: sourcing new investment opportunities; negotiating and structuring transactions; performing due diligence on potential deals; negotiating legal documents; and providing strategic and value-added assistance to portfolio companies on a variety of projects including the assessment of liquidity alternatives and valuation of potential acquisition targets for attractive exits.
Prior to his experience in private equity, Mr. Henley was an Investment Banker with Goldman Sachs, where he worked on a number of buy-side and sell-side mergers and acquisitions transactions, and consummated a number of corporate finance transactions. His responsibilities were focused on transaction execution and included assessing strategic alternatives such as management buyouts, mergers/acquisitions, and recapitalizations. These responsibilities required extensive analyses, including valuation analysis (financial modeling), control and governance analysis, and hedging strategy analysis. He also worked on a number of equity and debt financings. He advised clients on all aspects of acquisitions, divestitures and private financing.
Thomas Henley has been involved with transacting deals in excess of $75 billion. He has worked on a wide number of transactions that include some of the most visible deals in the market, including: equity investments into Hertz, Restoration Hardware, and Clear Channel. He also represented Shell in the acquisition of Tejas Gas, Mobil Oil in the sale of their Plastics Business (the Hefty Bag product line) to Tenneco Packaging and Proctor & Gamble in its acquisition of the Baby Wipes business from Kimberly Clark.
Mr. Henley earned an MBA from the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA where he received a Chevron Fellowship in Finance, and a BS from Stanford University with a degree in Petroleum Engineering. While at Stanford University, Mr. Henley was the recipient of the Buck Club athletic scholarship where he played football and received numerous awards, including All-Pacific 10 Conference honors in multiple years. Mr. Henley currently sits on the Investment Board of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (“NCAA”) and Lazarus Energy Holdings, an aggregator of energy assets.