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Watermen CapitalMerchant Banking and Advisory ServicesWelcome To Watermen -
Watermen CapitalMerchant Banking and Advisory Services -
Watermen CapitalMerchant Banking and Advisory Services -
Welcome to Watermen Capital.
Watermen Capital is a merchant banking and advisory firm that invests directly in, and provides strategic consulting services to, middle market companies and real estate ventures in the United States. Founded in 2009 by Chris Crovatto and John Seeburger, the firm operates from offices in Greenwich, Connecticut and Newport Beach, California.
The Watermen Name
The term “Watermen” is reserved for those individuals who possess considerable skill over a wide range of oceanic endeavors. They are highly-attuned to the elements and match their skills and equipment to the prevailing environment. For generations, Watermen have been sought to navigate and provide safe passage across the world’s waterways.
The global economy often resembles a turbulent sea, with its volatility and constantly changing conditions. Successful investing requires resourcefulness combined with broad and adaptable skill sets. Like its namesake, Watermen Capital advises investors on how best to navigate the often unsettled waters of today’s economic environment, deploying its own capital alongside them in the process. Each partner brings 25 years of investment and advisory experience and combined they have completed more than $4 billion in equity, debt, and advisory transactions. In doing so, the firm and its principals have earned the trust and respect of peers and clients alike by consistently delivering superior financial returns and providing sound strategic advice.
Our Mission
Our mission is to invest capital with creative structuring and disciplined underwriting to achieve compelling financial returns while preserving capital across business cycles. We accomplish this by identifying and managing the arbitrage between real and perceived risk in transactions.
Our Values
At Watermen Capital, we are committed to a core set of values that guide our business. These include:
- Creativity
- Discipline
- Collaboration
- Resourcefulness
- Tenacity
- Honesty
- Accountability
- Humility
The wind and the waves are always on the side of the
ablest navigator.
What We Do
Merchant Banking
We employ our experience, knowledge base, and extensive network to identify and pursue investments in companies and real estate projects across a wide range of industries, asset classes, and geographic regions. We target opportunities that have substantial growth potential along with tangible downside protection, and where our relationships, unique skill sets and strategic input create value and maximize returns. We invest our capital alongside management’s to align interests and actively contribute our resources for the benefit of the project and partners.
We leverage our extensive contacts to attract thoughtful capital providers that understand the particular business, respect management’s value, and recognize that capital is an essential contributor to, but not the only element of, a successful investment. Our principals engage on a daily basis with a diverse network of institutional investors, venture capitalists, family offices, and high net worth individuals to understand each party’s investment criteria. Often, successful project capitalization is simply a function of finding the right “fit” between management and investors, although more often than not, this can be anything but “simple”. By developing and maintaining strong relationships and understanding each investor’s target profile, we match opportunities with the right capital providers.
Investment Banking and Strategic Advisory Services
In addition to direct principal investing, we provide specialized advisory services for capital formation, distressed/restructuring situations and acquisition/disposition strategies, primarily on a referral basis within the firm’s network. As entrepreneurs and principals in our own enterprise ventures, the partners at Watermen Capital have experienced firsthand the challenges that small to medium-sized businesses face when seeking equity and debt financing in capital markets biased toward large institutional transactions.
Our senior executives remain directly involved throughout every assignment. When we take on a project, we are passionate advocates to enable your company or real estate venture to achieve its financial and strategic objectives. As every transaction is different, we tailor solutions to each situation; however, the constants to every Watermen deal are exhaustive research, organization, thoroughness of marketing materials, energy, and tenacity.
Debt Financing and Placement
The Watermen team brings over 40 years of combined experience in creative structured finance at major financial institutions. Our principals have negotiated debt transactions as both lender and borrower; we understand the hot buttons on both sides of the table. We maintain extensive relationships at banks, finance companies, bulge-bracket investment banks, conduits, mezzanine investors and private lenders. We are adept throughout the capital stack and possess the expertise to handle complex credit structures including senior and senior participating debt, mezzanine financing, credit enhancements, corporate and real estate bond financing, credit lines, revolvers, repo facilities, rate hedging strategies and more. We understand each lender’s credit culture and can position your company or real estate project for success. At Watermen Capital, we have confidence in our underwriting and will often retain the risk piece of the debt stack. We are uniquely positioned to find our clients the best execution available in the market.
Waves are not measured in feet or inches, they are measured in
increments of fear.
Our Investment Approach
Investment Philosophy
- Our experience has taught us that people make deals work, and therefore, the foundation of our investment philosophy is built on trust and integrity with our partners and those with whom we do business. We seek to partner with exceptional teams and individuals that share our vision, values and relentless drive to succeed.
- We generally avoid competing directly with large institutions and the public markets by focusing on middle market transactions ranging in size from $2 to $50 million.
- As opportunistic, value-add investors, we seek situations with a definable strategy and catalyst to grow profits and shareholder value. These opportunities often have time sensitive circumstances that require speed and certainty of execution.
- We employ disciplined underwriting through a research-driven analysis of the fundamentals and prudent risk management.
- We combine a deep understanding of the credit markets with creative structuring to customize a solution for each investment.
- Our senior management stays involved throughout the investment process, from sourcing through realization, in order to ensure proper decision making while eliminating bureaucracy that slows decision making and execution.
- We align our interests with investors through performance-based compensation.
- We pride ourselves on providing timely reporting and managing investor funds with care.
- We focus on the exit strategy at all times in order to achieve our core objectives – preserving capital and delivering superior risk-adjusted returns.
Investment Characteristics
Here are a few of the characteristics that we look for when we invest in companies, technologies and real estate:
- A unique product, strategy or location
- A defensible market niche
- Barriers to entry for new supply/competition
- Identifiable catalysts for top and bottom line growth
- The potential for attractive and sustainable profit margins
- A management team with a proven track record and operational expertise
Industry Focus
We are constantly re-evaluating our strategy to stay one step ahead of the market. Our current areas of focus and active investments include:
- Real Estate
- Hospitality
- Energy
- Technology
- Manufacturing
- Financial Services
- Distressed Debt
Deal Sourcing
The Watermen team operates from geographically diverse locations and utilizes a proprietary network developed over the past 20 years to source opportunities. Our approach emphasizes direct principal relationships and extensive contacts at financial institutions to source high quality investments. Our principals also maintain longstanding intermediary relationships across the country to ensure market coverage.
You can’t change the wind, you can, however,
adjust your sails.
Our People
Watermen Capital is led by its two Managing Partners, Chris Crovatto and John Seeburger, who work with a team of co-investor partners, industry experts, and consultants to review investment opportunities, deploy capital, and provide strategic advisory services. Both are proven investors and capital arrangers with deep relationships throughout the private equity and lending communities. They bring extensive experience in structuring and risk management, and together leverage complementary skill sets in their roles as managing partners in private equity backed ventures and portfolio companies.
Chris Crovatto leads the firm’s merchant banking and asset management activities in the Eastern US from the Greenwich office. He brings 25 years as an entrepreneur, advisor, and direct investor in middle-market real estate and private equity transactions. He specializes in structured finance with a focus on high yield and opportunistic/distressed debt and equity investment, as well as advisory and capital raising initiatives. He has completed over $2 billion in middle-market transactions in the commercial real estate, distressed debt, technology, manufacturing, and energy sectors. Chris is an expert in project capital formation and he brings a unique ability to structure creative solutions around even the most complex hurdles. Prior to founding Watermen Capital, he was a senior executive focusing on the identification and execution of financing and acquisition opportunities at Babcock & Brown LP, Contrarian Capital Management, Bank of America, and Union Bank of Switzerland.
Chris holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Columbia College and he studied abroad at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland.
John Seeburger spearheads the firm’s fundraising, structuring, acquisition and asset management activities in the Western US from the Newport Beach office. He has 25 years of experience as an investor, structured lender, business operator, and advisor. John has built equity, debt finance and operating platforms from the ground up for major financial institutions, opportunity funds and private investors. He has successfully negotiated and closed over $2 billion in middle market transactions in a variety of assets including commercial real estate, hospitality/leisure, technology and operating companies. John approaches every investment opportunity and capital raising effort with a thoughtful blend of organization, analytics, flexibility and the unyielding pursuit of a successful outcome. Prior to founding Watermen Capital, John was a senior executive at Capmark, GMAC, GE Capital, Heller and Bank of America.
John began his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles before receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of California, Irvine. He enjoyed a successful career as a NCAA Division I athlete and was twice selected in the Major League Baseball draft before playing professionally in the New York Yankees system. He is a licensed real estate broker in the state of California and has held an MAI designation with the Appraisal Institute.
The art of the waterman is to leave
nothing to chance.
Contact Us
If you have a question or would like to request additional information about Watermen Capital LLC or our services, please feel free to contact us.
Greenwich Office
- Chris Crovatto
- Address: 545 Steamboat Rd., 2nd Floor Greenwich, CT 06830
- Phone: (203) 340-5408
- Mobile: (917) 496-9217
- Email: ccrovatto@watermencapital.com
Newport Beach Office:
- John Seeburger
- Address: 620 Newport Center Dr., 11th Floor, Newport Beach, CA 92660
- Phone: (949) 682-5650
- Mobile: (949) 230-8321
- Email: jseeburger@watermencapital.com