John Howard

John David Howard is Co-Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer of Irving Place Capital, a New York-based middle-market private equity firm. Irving Place Capital traces its origins to Bear Stearns Merchant Banking, which Howard founded in 1997; the team spun out of JPMorgan in 2008 as Irving Place Capital.

Before founding Bear Stearns Merchant Banking / Irving Place Capital, Howard was Co-Chief Executive Officer of Vestar Capital Partners, a private investment firm specializing in management buyouts. Earlier, he was a Senior Vice President and Partner at Wesray Capital Corporation, an early leveraged-buyout sponsor.

Howard holds an M.B.A. from Yale School of Management and a B.A. from Trinity College. SEC filings for Bright Lights Acquisition Corp. describe him as having more than 30 years of private equity investing experience, with significant capital invested across consumer products, retail, and industrial companies.

In addition to IPC, Howard co-managed Celebrands with Allen Shapiro and served as a Non-Executive Co-Chairman nominee of Bright Lights Acquisition Corp., a SPAC focused on consumer products, media, entertainment, and sports companies.

• IPC’s stated investment parameters are $50 million to $250 million of equity capital in companies with EBITDA above $7 million.
• The firm targets primarily North American companies and focuses on consumer, industrial, and packaging businesses.
• IPC is flexible on ownership structure, including control or minority positions, and invests through buyouts, recapitalizations, growth capital financings, corporate divestitures, build-ups, and public-to-private transactions.
• The firm says it looks for “strong overlap between our capabilities and a company’s value creation potential.”
• IPC emphasizes partnering with management teams, industry-specific operating resources, add-on acquisitions, and long-term value creation rather than passive capital.
• Private Equity International reported that Irving Place Capital confirmed in 2021 that it was no longer making new investments, so founders should treat the published investment parameters as historical or portfolio-management context unless directly confirmed by the firm.