Sean Davenport

Sean Davenport is Partner, Private Credit at The Sterling Group. Sterling describes itself as an operationally focused middle-market private equity firm that partners with management teams to grow businesses in the industrial sector; its credit strategy invests primarily in junior debt alongside private equity sponsors and other partners.

Davenport joined Sterling as a Partner in 2017 after 16 years as Sterling’s lead lender while he was Managing Director in the Merchant Banking Group at BNP Paribas. Sterling says he was involved in financing nearly every Sterling investment since 2001 before formally joining the firm.

At Sterling, Davenport helped form the Sterling Credit Fund in 2017 to provide mezzanine and second-lien lending to Sterling and other sponsors. His background is centered on originating, structuring, and executing senior and subordinated debt instruments and equity co-investments in the middle market. Sterling states that he has underwritten more than $13 billion of senior, mezzanine, and second-lien debt and made more than $80 million of equity co-investments.

Davenport received a B.B.A. from the University of Arkansas and an M.B.A. from the M.J. Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University.

• Sterling Credit Fund invests primarily in junior debt by partnering with private equity sponsors and others to finance and grow middle-market businesses.
• The fund provides mezzanine, second-lien, and unitranche debt, and also makes equity co-investments.
• Sterling says the credit strategy supports leveraged buyouts, recapitalizations, acquisition financings, growth financings, and minority transactions.
• Target businesses are growing and profitable middle-market companies with stable revenue and cash flow, experienced management, strong equity sponsorship, and a defensible market position.
• Sector scope is broad but includes consumer, food distribution, industrials, manufacturing, distribution, and industrial/business services.
• Sterling’s stated partnership philosophy for the credit strategy: “true partnership results in better returns for all parties.”