Wind Point, Tokarz executives form HC Private Investments to focus on lower-mid market

John Kelly and Matthew Moran, two investment professionals, formed HC Private Investments to focus on lower-middle-market manufacturing companies, according to an announcement from the firm.

HC Private Investments will use capital from HC Technologies, a Chicago principal trading firm led by Joe Niciforo, managing principal. HC Private Investments is a unit of HC Technologies. The firm also will bring in select family offices to participate in deals.

Kelly was an investment professional at Tokarz Group Advisers/MVC Capital, a lower-middle-market firm. Kelly previously worked in the investment-banking group at Bear Stearns.

Moran worked at Wind Point Partners from 2006 to February 2016, leaving the firm as a vice president, according to his LinkedIn profile. Earlier he was an analyst at Lehman Brothers.

HC Private Investments focuses on deals ranging from $10 million to $100 million in enterprise value in the consumer and industrial markets. Typical equity investments range $5 million to $25 million.

The firm works with a network of operating executives that will work with management teams in HC Private Investments’s portfolio companies.

“We are seeing a tremendous opportunity in the lower middle market, where businesses have historically lacked the necessary strategic resources to realize their full potential,” Kelly and Moran said in the statement.

Action Item: Reach John Kelly at jpk@hcprivateinvest.com and Matt Moran at mjm@hcprivateinvest.com

The Chicago skyline as seen from Lake Michigan. Photo by Alastair Goldfisher, Venture Capital Journal.