Amon Johnson joined Star Mountain Capital, a specialized investment manager with approximately $3.5 billion in assets under management, as a managing director. Johnson will be based in Star Mountain’s New York City office and join the firm’s environment, social and governance and diversity, equity and inclusion committees.
“Amon is joining our team in response to the increasing demand by institutional and retail investors to target defensive, high yielding and asymmetric upside returns,” Brett Hickey, founder and CEO of Star Mountain Capital, said. “Amon’s history in advising sophisticated clients and trusted relationships will allow Star Mountain to continue to provide high quality partnerships with our growing investor base, enhancing our value proposition to investors and business owners. We are aligned with Amon’s values including our continuing efforts to build an industry-leading and diverse team.”
“I was attracted to Star Mountain’s investor-centric differentiated and purpose-built business focused on generating systematic alpha for investors with the further benefit of low market correlation, which I think is increasingly important in today’s uncertain economic environment,” Johnson said. “I believe Star Mountain’s distinctive business model and highly aligned team will be a perfect place for me to utilize my 30 years of experience including over 15 years at BlackRock. I look forward to leveraging my experience and relationships to continue to develop Star Mountain’s team and business.”
Johnson is a senior executive with more than 30 years of investment industry experience working with institutions and family offices investors on portfolio investments.
Johnson spent more than 15 years at BlackRock, a multi-asset investment manager. As a managing director and member of the Institutional Client Business Group, he advised and provided oversight for domestic institutional client relationships. He oversaw approximately $40 billion of client capital invested across a broad range of global strategies. At BlackRock, he worked under current Star Mountain senior advisor, Doug Waggoner, who led BlackRock’s U.S. and Canada Institutional Client Business Group.
Johnson was most recently a managing director, head of investor relations and fundraising at Backcast Partners, a $1.2 billion AUM private credit manager focused on senior lending to non-sponsored and sponsor backed companies in the U.S. lower middle-market. Johnson was responsible for all aspects of the fundraising process including coordination of investment consultants for larger institutional clients.
Prior to Backcast, Johnson was a managing director at PineBridge Investments as part of the Americas institutional sales group where he focused on middle-market direct lending, mezzanine credit and secondary investment strategies. He helped restructure the U.S. product suite and played an integral part in the firm’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) effort.
Earlier in his career, Johnson was a vice president at JPMorgan Investment Management responsible for building and managing direct relationships with more than 30 clients representing total AUM of more than $10 billion. While at JPMorgan Investment Management, he was selected to join a group of 37 professionals from its nine global offices in a rigorous five-month program designed to build core competencies in all product lines and client areas.
Johnson started his career as a tax specialist at KPMG.
