Founded in 1984, Hellman & Friedman (H&F) is one of the oldest and most experienced private equity investment firms operating today. We are well respected for our distinctive investment philosophy and focused approach targeting large-scale equity investments in companies in select sectors. H&F has offices in San Francisco, New York and London.
We are focused on a single private equity strategy. We generally seek to build a concentrated portfolio of scale investments in industries we know well and have developed significant expertise.
We believe in sharing good (and bad) news early, aligning ourselves with our investors and companies, and truly partnering and empowering management teams. We also don’t charge transaction or monitoring fees to our portfolio companies (and haven’t since our founding).1
We invest for the long haul to support the strategic and financial objectives of outstanding management teams. We believe our deep sector experience allows us to add value and offer insights that enable our companies to flourish.
Our investment philosophy is enhanced further by the depth of our focus on industry verticals. We have distinguished ourselves as a value-added partner with deep sector insights in select verticals which enables us to take a differentiated approach to sourcing, diligence, and value creation initiatives.
We have a clear investment philosophy and disciplined approach to investing and have demonstrated performance across multiple investment cycles over our 35 year history.
Hellman & Friedman was founded in 1984 by Warren Hellman and Tully Friedman. Warren and Tully met during their respective careers at Lehman Brothers and Salomon Brothers and believed there was an opportunity to create an investment and advisory firm west of the Mississippi. Tully left in 1997 to form FFL, a successful middle-market private equity firm. Warren remained with the company until his death in 2011, and the firm we are today is a direct reflection of their leadership. Over our investing history, we have raised over $70 billion of committed capital and have invested in over 100 companies.
Over the firm’s 40-year history, we have developed specialized industry knowledge and deep relationships in our sectors of focus, which has enhanced our ability to have a differentiated approach to sourcing, diligence and value creation. Our investment philosophy and the business characteristics we seek often align with service-based businesses. In many of these, the most important assets are the intangibles: the people, their business practices and intellectual capital, and their customer relationships. H&F has developed considerable experience addressing these complex issues and is a leading private equity investor in select service sectors, among others. We also continuously seek to identify new industries or sub-sectors that meet our investment criteria to maximize our opportunity set.
Along the way, we believe we have distinguished ourselves as a flexible source of capital and a value-added partner with deep sector insights. We have experience as a controlling shareholder and influential minority investor, and have invested using a variety of transaction and capital structures. Investors in our funds include many of the largest U.S. and international public pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, corporate pension funds, university endowments and foundations, many of whom have been investing with us for decades. We take great pride in building long-term partnerships with our investors.
Many people have asked us how Hellman & Friedman has been able to maintain its culture and results through the many investment fads and market cycles of our industry. Our answer has always been simple—that we have been blessed with the best founder in the business. Learn more about Warren.
1. To the extent that H&F receives transaction, monitoring or similar fees from a portfolio company (e.g., when investing with a third-party private equity sponsor), management fees received by H&F from the applicable H&F affiliated fund are reduced by 100% of the amount attributable to such fund after related expenses.