Stratton Heath

Stratton R. Heath, III is a Partner at Oak Hill Capital, the private equity firm founded in 1986 around the investment activities of Robert M. Bass. He has been with the firm since 2002 and is responsible for structuring and managing Oak Hill's Capital Markets activities — the debt financing, capital structuring, and financing execution behind the firm's private-equity transactions. He sits on the firm's Executive, Investment, and Operations Committees.

Before joining Oak Hill, Heath spent roughly 15 years in banking at The Bank of New York Company, Inc. and its affiliates. During that career he founded and managed a sponsor-focused leveraged-finance business as well as a private equity and mezzanine principal-investment business — experience that maps directly onto his current capital-markets role. He also served as Chief Financial Officer of Keystone Group, L.P. (a Bass-family-affiliated entity) until 2015.

Heath earned a B.S. in Finance, *magna cum laude*, from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder (class of 1987), and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School, where he received the Award for Excellence. He remains active with his alma mater as a member of the Leeds School of Business Board of Alumni and Friends.

Oak Hill itself is a substantial institution — it has managed well over $15 billion in committed capital across its funds, historically backed by investors including Robert Bass, Bill Gates, Nike founder Phil Knight, and Stanford University. It is a control-oriented middle-market private-equity investor, not an angel or seed vehicle.

• Heath operates at the firm/capital-markets level, not as an individual angel writing seed checks. His job is structuring and executing the financing (debt, leverage, capital structure) that supports Oak Hill's private-equity deals.
• Oak Hill's thesis is control-oriented, middle-market private equity concentrated in four sectors: Media & Communications, Industrials, Business & Financial Services, and Consumer, Retail & Distribution.
• The firm targets established, cash-generative companies where operational improvement and add-on M&A drive value — the opposite end of the maturity spectrum from seed-stage startups.
• No publicly documented personal angel/seed thesis or individual startup investments were found for Heath.