David Coquillette

David Coquillette is a Managing Director at New Mountain Capital, which he joined in 2010. He manages the firm's business development and capital-raising functions — effectively leading investor relations and fundraising across New Mountain's private equity, strategic equity, credit, and net-lease real estate vehicles. In that capacity he helped support fundraises including New Mountain Partners VII (which closed on roughly $15.4 billion) and, more recently, New Mountain Strategic Equity Fund II (which closed on $1.2 billion in January 2026).

Before New Mountain, Coquillette managed investment-product marketing and client coverage at Oak Hill Advisors. Prior to that he spent about eight years at Goldman Sachs, where he rose to Managing Director and Co-Head of the Markets Coverage Group within the Investment Management Division. Earlier in his career he worked as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers and at Bankers Trust, focused on transportation and industrial-company M&A as well as general corporate and leveraged finance.

He earned a B.A. from DePauw University in 1988 and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993.

New Mountain Capital itself was founded in 1999 by Steven Klinsky and pursues a research-driven "defensive growth" strategy — acquiring high-quality leaders in acyclical industries, using debt moderately (in some cases none), and building businesses operationally rather than through financial leverage. The firm notes it has never had a private equity portfolio-company bankruptcy or missed an interest payment.

• Coquillette's own role is capital raising and business development, not deal sourcing/angel investing; the "thesis" below describes the New Mountain platform he raises capital for.
• "Defensive growth": New Mountain targets acyclical, high-quality industry leaders and grows them through operational value-add rather than leverage.
• Conservative use of debt: Moderate (sometimes zero) leverage at acquisition; the firm emphasizes never having had a PE portfolio bankruptcy.
• Sector concentration in researched niches: healthcare/healthcare technologies, software, tech-enabled business services, data & analytics, logistics, specialty chemicals, federal/government services, financial & insurance services, and environmental services.
• Multiple stages/products: control private equity (New Mountain Partners funds), strategic (minority) equity, credit, and net-lease real estate — roughly $60B in total AUM.