Star Mountain Capital, a specialized investment manager with approximately $2.5 billion in assets under management and focused exclusively on investing in private small and medium-sized North American businesses, added Tom Tull as a senior advisor. Star Mountain Capital’s senior advisors and operating partners align with the company’s full-time team and investors by sharing carried interest and personal capital invested.
“We are delighted to have another veteran senior executive with over 40 years of investment management, portfolio allocation and manager selection experience broadening our value-add capabilities in helping grow established smaller businesses across the U.S.,” Brett Hickey, founder and CEO of Star Mountain Capital, said. “Tom has deep and distinguished investment experience and insights which we believe will further add value to our team, our investors and the portfolio companies we invest in.”
“I have had the privilege of knowing Tom for over 10 years, so it is wonderful to be working with him now at Star Mountain,” John Ide, managing director at Star Mountain Capital, said.
“Star Mountain has built a distinctive business to address the challenges and opportunities of the lower middle market, a less competitive market segment that has the potential to generate compelling absolute and risk-adjusted returns,” Tull said. “I am delighted to be joining this high-quality firm that over the prior decade has built an experienced team nationwide with infrastructure to execute within this attractive but labor intensive and fragmented marketplace.”
Tull was most recently the chief investment officer at the Employees Retirement System of Texas (ERS), where he managed a $35 billion public pension plan that administers on behalf of employees and retirees of the state of Texas. While at ERS, Tull was involved with more than 200 completed investment transactions totaling $13 billion and encompassing private equity, private credit, private real estate, global credit, hedge funds and special situations. He served in this capacity since 2009 and was responsible for all aspects of public and private markets investments, including managing a team of approximately 80 staff members.
Tull’s industry accolades include the CIO Industry Innovation award, the Institutional Investor Public Funds CIO of the Year award and the AIF Institute Statewide Accredited Program Excellence award.
Prior to joining ERS, Tull was the founding partner of Gulfstream Global Investors, an international equity management firm sold in 2001 to German state-backed financial institution WestLB.
Previously, Tull was a director of employee benefit fund investments for The LTV Corporation and also served as president of Western Reserve Capital Management, the pension asset management subsidiary of The LTV Corporation. In this capacity, he was responsible for the investment of a $1.2 billion retirement trust.
Prior to joining LTV in February 1983, Tull served for seven years as director of pension investments of The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company. He managed an in-house pension fund, introduced international investing and other diversification policies and performed a variety of corporate duties, including corporate acquisitions.
During his career, Tull also served a three-year term as a member of the National Adjudicatory Council of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an independent regulator of securities firms doing business in the United States.
