Stephen Faughnan has joined Star Mountain Capital, a specialized investment manager, with more than $3 billion in assets under management, focused exclusively on investing in established, private small and medium-sized North American businesses (lower middle-market), as managing director of finance and operations. A differentiating factor of Star Mountain’s investor-aligned business is that 100% of its team including senior advisors / operating partners share in the investment profits.
“Steve brings decades of finance, operations and compliance experience from large global asset management firms like Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Siguler Guff,” Brett Hickey, founder and CEO of Star Mountain Capital, said. “We are committed to continuing to invest in our best practices finance and operations function as well as bringing additional resources to our collaborative ecosystem to further support our portfolio investments.”
“Having seen hundreds of asset managers over my 20 years of alternative investments experience, I found Star Mountain’s investment strategies and culture to be differentiated leading me to want to continue my career and offer my expertise there,” Faughnan said. “The firm’s long-term commitment to team, training, infrastructure, technology and data have helped build a strong foundation for continued growth.”
Faughnan has more than 20 years of finance, operations, accounting, tax and regulatory compliance experience across the financial services industry including private credit, private equity, secondary funds, hedge funds, ’40 act funds, fund of funds, and various other regulated fund structures.
Prior to joining Star Mountain, Faughnan was the managing director of operations at Siguler Guff & Company, a more than $15 billion AUM multi-strategy private equity, private credit and secondary investments firm. In his capacity as the managing director of operations, he was responsible for all daily operational functions for the firm and its related investment vehicles, including fund financing, operational due diligence, currency hedge trading, AIFMD implementation and reporting, information technology/cybersecurity, treasury and human resources.
Previously, Faughnan spent more than 12 years at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), where he was a vice president. He held many different roles within GSAM, across finance, operations and regulatory compliance while working in the New York, Bangalore, Seoul and Tokyo offices. In these varied roles, he focused on management company reporting, fund accounting, portfolio valuations, fund operations and regulatory compliance.
Faughnan started his career as a tax consultant at Deloitte & Touche where he spent two years advising clients on their global tax planning and compliance needs.
