John Stewart

John Stewart is the founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Investment Officer of MiddleGround Capital, a Lexington, Kentucky-based private equity firm he co-founded in 2018 (alongside partners including Scot Duncan). MiddleGround manages over $4.1 billion in assets and makes control equity investments in middle-market B2B industrial and specialty distribution companies, creating value through a hands-on, lean-manufacturing operational approach.

Stewart's path is unusual for a PE founder: he began his career as an hourly line worker at Toyota Motor Corporation and spent roughly 18 years there, moving through management and executive roles. He credits the Toyota Production System as the intellectual foundation of MiddleGround's operating model. He is the author of *Toyota Kaizen Continuum: A Practical Guide to Implementing Lean*, which underpins the firm's operating system and portfolio training programs.

He made the move to private equity in 2007, joining a prior firm as an Operating Partner, was progressively promoted, and became a Partner in 2016 before leaving to launch MiddleGround. Over his career he has served on the boards of 25+ businesses spanning the middle market to the Fortune 100. He was named a Top 10 Rising Star in the industry by *Automotive News* (2007), appeared on the cover of *Bloomberg Businessweek* (April 30, 2012), and was recognized by Axial as a Top Thought Leader in the Lower Middle Market (2020).

Stewart has strong ties to the University of Kentucky. In 2023 he gave a $10 million gift to UK's Gatton College of Business and Economics, and the university's finance department was named the "John Maze Stewart Department of Finance and Quantitative Methods" in his honor; part of the gift endowed a MiddleGround Scholarship for minority finance students and supported the Wall Street Scholars program.

• Invests in lower-middle-market B2B industrial manufacturers and specialty distributors in North America and Europe, generally with revenue under ~$350M.
• Prefers engineered components over finished/commodity goods: "We like companies that supply other industrial customers. I like to make components. I don't like to make final parts."
• Equity checks of ~$30M to $100M+ for control positions; also runs a co-investment program targeting ~30% per deal on a no-fee, no-carry basis.
• Operational value creation is the core thesis — Stewart describes attacking "every line item of the P&L [and] balance sheet" via productivity gains, automation, working-capital optimization, and wage increases (averaging 30%+ across the portfolio), drawing directly on Toyota lean methods.
• Targets businesses with typical ~10% EBITDA margins where operational improvement can drive returns.