C Derek Anderson

C. Derek Anderson is the founder and Senior Managing Partner of Plantagenet Capital Management, a private equity firm formed in 1991 and based in Mill Valley, California. He has more than 35 years of experience in investment management. According to contemporaneous profiles, he was 64 years old as of mid-2000, placing his birth around 1936.

Anderson built his early career in sales, brokerage, and arbitrage. In 1974 he founded his own securities firm, C.D. Anderson & Co., Inc., an early player in the then-new discount brokerage business. The firm grew to become the second-largest discount broker in the western U.S., reportedly with an average account size more than four times that of its chief competitor, Charles Schwab & Co. In 1983 he co-developed and introduced what was described as the world's first PC-based, real-time online securities-trading system. He sold C.D. Anderson & Co. to Security Pacific Bank (later absorbed into Bank of America) in 1985.

In the late 1980s Anderson became involved in the Chapter 11 reorganization of apparel maker Munsingwear, Inc. (later PremiumWear, Inc.), serving as Chairman of the Creditors Committee and negotiating the company's bankruptcy filing and plan of reorganization. That restructuring work led him to form Plantagenet's immediate predecessor, Plantagenet Holdings Limited (PHL). PHL founded Plantagenet Partners I, L.P., which made a highly successful investment in Bonneville-Pacific Corporation, an alternative-energy company. Anderson has since been active in restructuring several Plantagenet holdings, including Bonneville-Pacific and Dalgety plc.

Since its formation, Plantagenet has invested in roughly 20 companies via equity and equity-related transactions spanning early-stage growth to late-stage recapitalizations and turnarounds. The firm raised a series of partnerships (Plantagenet Partners VII–IX and Plantagenet Capital Fund III, a ~$100M vehicle closed in 2000) plus a dedicated European fund. John J. Zappettini is also listed as a managing partner of the firm.

• Focuses on early-stage and turnaround/restructuring situations, with transactions ranging from early growth equity to late-stage recapitalizations.
• Deep bias toward distressed and special-situations investing — his signature deals (Munsingwear, Bonneville-Pacific, Dalgety plc) came out of bankruptcies, restructurings, and reorganizations, an approach a trade profile described as pursuing buyouts "with Viking-like fervor."
• Opportunistic and generalist by sector, having invested across apparel, alternative energy, food, and technology software.
• Comfortable operating hands-on in portfolio companies, taking creditor-committee and restructuring roles rather than passive minority stakes.
• Fund vehicles were institutionally sized (Fund III ~$100M), so historical check sizes were meaningful equity positions rather than small angel tickets, despite aggregator "seed/angel" labels.