Knox Clark

Knox Clark is a Co-Founder and Partner of AMCREF Community Capital, LLC, a New Orleans–based specialty finance firm he helped launch in 2005. He brings more than three decades of commercial and corporate finance experience as a lender, investment banker, and corporate development director. In addition to co-founding AMCREF, he is the founder of Gulf South Finance (established in 2003) and Palmetto Capital Advisors.

Before founding Gulf South Finance, Clark served as Vice President, Corporate Finance at Hibernia Southcoast Capital, where he spent roughly four years executing mergers and acquisitions, equity financings, and other financial advisory services for public and private companies. Earlier in his career, he spent about nine years in the natural resources sector managing corporate development across five continents, including stock and asset acquisitions and expansion initiatives.

Clark earned a BA from Tulane University and an MBA from Loyola University New Orleans, keeping his career anchored in his home region of southern Louisiana.

At AMCREF, Clark is part of a team that is a U.S. Treasury–certified Community Development Entity. The firm has received fourteen federal New Markets Tax Credit allocations totaling roughly $787.5 million, has deployed over $800 million in NMTC capital, and reports facilitating about $1.5 billion in total transactions—helping fund more than 70 businesses and create or preserve over 8,000 full-time jobs.

• Provides flexible, below-market-rate financing to manufacturing and industrial businesses located in low-income and rural communities, rather than conventional venture equity.
• Uses New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) capital and non-conventional debt as the primary financing instruments, often partnering with larger CDEs and bank community-development arms (e.g., U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation, UB Community Development).
• Says "yes" to businesses that create quality jobs and economic opportunity for low-income persons and communities—impact and community-development outcomes are core underwriting criteria.
• Sector leanings toward clean energy, sustainable/advanced manufacturing, recycling, and green infrastructure, alongside traditional industrial and manufacturing operations.
• Geographic priority on the Southern U.S., especially rural and economically distressed areas.