TPG poaches ops trio from Cerberus

TPG Capital has boosted its  portfolio management team with the hire of three professionals from rival private equity giant Cerberus Capital Management, PEM has learned. TPG has always had one of the largest groups of operations professionals – focused on driving efficiency in portfolio company processes – but this is the first time the private equity giant has poached a full team for this part of the business.

The trio, who all focus on procurement services, is led by Curt Miller, a former procurement general manager at Graftech, a US-based materials supplier, and director at General Electric. Miller had been with Cerberus for around five and a half years.

Miller is joined in the switch to TPG by Roger Beggs, an operations executive focused on finance and supply chain management, and Michael Weingart, a procurement executive. Beggs is a former GE and Graftech executive, while Weingart’s experience encompasses a number of large corporates.

The three begin work with TPG on Monday and will report to Nathan Wright, the TPG partner who heads the firm’s field operations group.

TPG is one of the world’s largest private equity firms, with around $47 billion under management across its various funds. The firm raised $18.8 billion for TPG VI in 2008, but voluntarily shrunk the size of the fund by a reported $1 billion as limited partners struggled with liquidity issues and the market for private equity deals contracted during the following year.

In 2009 a number of ex-Cerberus operations team members began marketing for a $400 million debut fund under the name Tenex Capital Management. The firm is being led by Michael Green, who was a member of Cerberus’ investment committee until 2009. He has been joined by five other senior executives from Cerberus, comprising Varun Bedi, a former senior vice-president at Cerberus, and four of Cerberus’ senior operations leaders: Chad Spooner, Helge Jacobsen, Joe Cottone and JP Bretl.

TPG and Cerberus declined to comment.