Eric Sondag

Eric Sondag is a private-equity investor with more than 20 years of transatlantic investment and M&A experience concentrated in media, communications, and tech-enabled business and consumer services. He began his career in 1998 in investment banking in Chicago (at Wasserstein Perella, later Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, where he served as a VP in M&A). He then spent over seven years at GTCR, the Chicago growth-buyout firm, as a senior member of the investment team overseeing investments across the technology, media and telecom (TMT) landscape, including media, information services and consumer industries.

In 2011 he joined Searchlight Capital Partners — the global private investment firm founded in 2010 with offices in New York, London and Toronto — as a Partner. Over nearly a decade there he led organizational-development initiatives and executed numerous transactions across the firm's priority verticals, and he took board seats at several portfolio companies. In September 2020 he left Searchlight to join Eurazeo Capital as a Managing Director based in New York, tasked with driving new investment opportunities and building the firm's North American presence in media, communications and tech-enabled services.

At Eurazeo he has since risen to Managing Partner and Co-Head of the Mid-Large Buyout (MLBO) strategy, which he leads alongside Maxime de Bentzmann and Antonin de Margerie. In that capacity he helped bring Eurazeo Capital V to a final close at roughly €3 billion in commitments, surpassing its target. He also holds long-standing board roles, most notably as Chairman of the Board of Cengage (director since March 2014, Chairman since May 2014).

Sondag earned a BSc in Business Administration (Finance major, Economics minor) from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, where he serves on the Board of Advisors, and completed an executive management program at INSEAD (Singapore).

• Stage & type: Control and large-cap buyout / growth equity at the mid-to-large end of the market — not early-stage or seed.
• Sectors: Deep, repeated focus on media, communications, and tech-enabled business and consumer services (TMT). His GTCR and Searchlight track records both center on these verticals.
• What makes him say yes: Value-added capital for scaled companies, often complex or special-situation deals across the capital structure — the style of both Searchlight ("opportunistic private equity and debt across the capital structure") and Eurazeo's MLBO program.
• In his own words (on joining Eurazeo): *"Eurazeo Capital's deep financial resources and investment philosophy are highly attractive to US companies seeking value-added capital."*
• Transatlantic angle: He is explicitly positioned to bridge North American deal flow with European capital, leveraging a relationship network across his priority verticals.