Fred Buffone

Fred Buffone is a Partner at Freedom 3 Capital, a private-credit firm he joined in 2016. He has more than 30 years of experience in middle-market finance, with a specialty in the sourcing, structuring, and syndication of private credit. At Freedom 3, his primary responsibilities are managing relationships with investors in new and existing funds and syndicating co-investments. Over his career he has been involved with more than 100 companies and the syndication of several billion dollars of investments.

Before Freedom 3, Buffone spent roughly three years as a Managing Director and Head of Capital Markets at Fifth Street Asset Management, where he handled origination of capital-markets and "club" investments, delivered market and investment intelligence to the firm, and syndicated private credit to co-investors. His move from Fifth Street to Freedom 3 was reported by Private Debt Investor in April 2016. Earlier in his career he held similar capital-markets and credit roles at TD Securities, Jefferies & Company, Berenson Minella & Company, and CIBC World Markets, beginning in 1994. He started in banking at Manufacturers Hanover Trust, where he completed the firm's credit-training program as an analyst.

Buffone earned a B.S. in Commerce & Engineering from Drexel University and participated in Boston University's London Internship Program. He is an active member of the institutional-credit community and has appeared as a speaker/organizer affiliated with the CFA Society New York.

Freedom 3 Capital itself was founded in 2013 and provides "creative debt and equity capital solutions" — chiefly mezzanine debt and preferred equity — to middle-market companies, often family-owned, taking a private-equity-style approach to credit underwriting rather than relying solely on standardized credit metrics. The firm runs roughly 18 professionals across its New York and Kansas City offices.

• Invests as a private-credit / direct lender, not a seed-stage angel — primarily mezzanine debt and preferred equity in established middle-market companies.
• Targets family-owned and founder-led middle-market businesses seeking growth capital or a strategic financial partner at critical inflection points.
• Applies a "private equity approach to credit investing" — underwriting the business and operating story rather than relying only on standardized credit ratios — and emphasizes behaving "like partners" with active, operationally engaged involvement.
• Buffone's personal mandate centers on capital-markets and syndication: building the LP/co-investor base, structuring deals, and syndicating co-investments — so his "yes" is driven by the ability to structure and place tailored credit solutions and attract co-investors.
• Sector approach is generalist, spanning IT/TMT, healthcare and medical devices, business services, payments, infrastructure/cloud, and consumer, across North America.