David Brandes

David Brandes is a Managing Director at Bay Grove, a San Francisco-based principal investment firm. Bay Grove announced on May 25, 2011 that Brandes had joined the firm as Managing Director and would be involved in all day-to-day activities, bringing real estate expertise to new transactions and the existing portfolio.

Before Bay Grove, Brandes spent more than nine years at Shorenstein Properties LLC, a real estate private equity firm. As a principal at Shorenstein, he sourced, negotiated and executed capital transactions in the Western United States, completing more than 30 transactions worth over $4.9 billion on behalf of closed-end funds and non-fund accounts.

Brandes began his career in Morgan Stanley’s San Francisco investment banking group, focused on M&A and financial sponsors. Bay Grove’s history page describes Brandes, Kevin Marchetti and Adam Forste as former Morgan Stanley colleagues who reunited after institutional private equity roles at Shorenstein, The Yucaipa Companies and KKR, respectively. Brandes graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.

At Bay Grove, Brandes is part of an owner-operator investment platform best known for building Lineage from its first frozen food warehouse acquisition in December 2008 into the world’s largest temperature-controlled warehouse REIT. Bay Grove says its team currently devotes all of its time to the growth and success of Lineage.

• Bay Grove’s stated model is to “invest in and operate one company at a time with the goal of building businesses that we could own forever.”
• The firm emphasizes platform creation, acquisitions plus organic capital deployment, deep domain expertise, efficient use of capital and long investment lifespans measured in decades rather than years.
• Bay Grove’s current platform focus is Lineage, a global temperature-controlled warehousing and logistics company serving food and perishable supply chains.
• The firm works as an owner-operator: it helps management with strategy, capital allocation and capital structure, while developing detailed operational and industry knowledge.
• Bay Grove’s buy-and-build approach favors owner-operated or family-built businesses where sellers can remain active as advisers, mentors or equity holders.
• Through Lineage Ventures, the broader platform looks for emerging technologies in global food supply chain, logistics and transportation, including supply-chain/logistics platforms, AI software, marketplaces, energy management, IoT and refrigeration technology.
• Lineage Ventures says it seeks companies where Lineage can help unlock value through collaboration, use as a test environment, or becoming a customer.