Star Mountain Capital, a specialized investment manager focused on investing in the lower middle market, added John Ide as a managing director for its Chicago office. Ide has 30 years of experience in credit and in advising institutions and family offices on their alternative investments.

“John brings tremendous experience, insights and relationships to further our overall best practices, including increasing our client services as we continue to develop products seeking to optimize various objectives for a wide range of institutional and high-net-worth investors,” Brett Hickey, founder and CEO of Star Mountain Capital, said. “With many longstanding mutual relationships, we believe John is a great culture fit as a high integrity individual with family and community centric values and a demonstrated track record of success growing to a leadership position within JPMorgan’s $2 trillion AUM asset management business.”

“Having been involved in credit for over 30 years first as a commercial banker and then as part of JPMorgan Asset Management and Deerpath, I find the lower middle market to be the most compelling risk-reward proposition for investors,” Ide said. “Star Mountain has built a differentiated business that I believe presents an exciting opportunity for both large and small investors and I look forward to continuing the good work done over the past decade since Star Mountain was founded.”

Ide spent the bulk of his career before Star Mountain Capital (22 years) at JPMorgan Asset Management. As a managing director and member of the strategic client group, he oversaw approximately $20 billion of client capital invested across a range of global strategies, including JPMorgan’s then affiliated more than $15 billion AUM Highbridge Principal Strategies’ private credit, mezzanine and special situations funds.

Ide was most recently a managing director at Deerpath Capital Management, a more than $2 billion AUM private credit manager focused on senior lending to private equity owned companies in the lower middle market in the U.S.

Prior to JPMorgan Asset Management, Ide was a director, corporate banker and lender at Banc One Capital Markets, a division of Bank One, which was later acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2004. While at Banc One Capital Markets, he originated, structured and underwrote more than $3 billion in asset-backed credit securities.