CenterOak Partners announced its formation, led by Randall Fojtasek, former co-founder and co-CEO of Brazos Private Equity Partners. He will lead the firm alongside former Brazos senior executives Michael Salim, Lucas Cutler, Jason Sutherland and William Henry.

CenterOak is focused on investing approximately $20 million to $70 million of equity capital in middle market companies with high potential for long-term growth. While target investments will be in middle market companies throughout the U.S., CenterOak will place a strong emphasis on the Southwest and South in niche segments of three core industry sectors Industrial Growth, Consumer and Business Services. The firm will seek to invest in buyouts and recapitalizations of middle market companies, such as closely held or family-owned businesses, non-core subsidiaries of larger public or private companies and buy-and-build opportunities with proven executives, and will attempt to construct a diversified portfolio of platform investments across the three core industry sectors.

CenterOak’s senior leadership team has approximately 12 years of experience working together and more than 110 years of combined industry expertise. In addition to CenterOak’s investment and portfolio management team, three operating partners will support the firm’s sector-specific investment activities. The partners are successful senior executives that bring almost 20 years of collective experience working with the CenterOak investment team.

“We are excited to continue working together at CenterOak. This experienced senior investment and operating team has a longstanding history of creating value for our investors and management partners alike,” said Randall Fojtasek, managing partner of CenterOak. “We look forward to continuing to build strong relationships with management teams and our Operating Partners at CenterOak, and are confident that our investment approach to value creation will continue to generate success.” Fojtasek was co-founder and co-CEO of Brazos, having managed $1.4 billion of private equity capital across three funds and overseeing the deployment of over $2.5 billion in transaction value.