Robert Spass

Robert A. Spass is the co-founder (with Bradley E. Cooper) and a Managing Partner of Capital Z Partners, a private equity firm focused exclusively on the financial-services industry that he helped launch around 1990. Per the firm's own bio, "For over thirty years, Mr. Spass has been a leading figure in the design and structuring of investments in the Financial Services Industry." He is widely credited as a pioneer of financial-services private equity, helping to design some of the first leveraged buyouts of insurance companies and pioneering the use of reinsurance financing as a corporate-finance tool in buyout transactions.

Before founding the firm's Fund I in 1990, Spass was a Director in the Investment Banking Division of Salomon Brothers, Inc., where he was responsible for corporate-finance relationships with the insurance industry. Earlier in his career, he was a Senior Manager at Peat Marwick Main & Co. (a predecessor of KPMG), providing accounting and consulting services to insurance-industry clients. He holds a B.A. in Business from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Capital Z was a genuine pioneer in the sector: the firm (and its predecessors) executed what it describes as the first-ever leveraged buyout in financial services — the acquisition of National Re — and has since invested approximately $3.0–3.5 billion across roughly 45 transactions in the U.S., Bermuda, and Europe. Spass currently serves as a director of several of the funds' portfolio companies and, over decades, has built an extensive network across the financial-services industry, including with many of its most senior figures.

• Invests exclusively in the financial-services industry, across "the full spectrum" — insurance, reinsurance, life & health insurance, banking, specialty finance, asset management, and related services businesses.
• Operates as a control/buyout and growth-equity investor, not an angel or seed investor — historically backing company formations, recapitalizations, and leveraged buyouts of insurers and reinsurers.
• Built a track record on structural innovation: pioneering reinsurance financing as a corporate-finance tool in buyouts and designing some of the earliest leveraged buyouts of insurance companies.
• Geographic reach spans the U.S., Bermuda, and the UK/Europe, with a particular concentration in Bermuda-domiciled P&C reinsurance and specialty insurance platforms.
• Says "yes" to opportunities where it can apply deep insurance/financial-services expertise and structuring know-how — frequently sponsoring or co-founding new insurance carriers rather than just buying existing ones.