Team|Bios

CRAIG KAHLER

Managing Director

Craig Kahler is a Managing Director at ORIX Capital Partners (“OCP”). In this role, he develops the middle-market private equity business by designing and executing investment strategies that leverage the firm’s capabilities and competitive advantages. Other responsibilities that contribute to growth include overseeing the New York-based investment team’s activities as well as maintaining and developing client relationships. Mr. Kahler also serves on the investment committee, playing a key role in investment strategy and assessing performance. Mr. Kahler also serves on ORIX USA’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Advisory Group and leads the Talent Development & Leadership taskforce.

Mr. Kahler has more than 16 years of private equity investing experience and previously served as Senior Director of Private Equity at Safanad, a global principal investment firm with $2 billion in assets under management. In addition to leading the day-to-day management of the private equity team, he was responsible for all aspects of the investment process including sourcing, structuring transactions, financing, fundraising and executing growth, and developing operational and add-on acquisition strategies. While there, Mr. Kahler launched Safanad’s data center platform, diversified Safanad’s portfolio by establishing a UK-based automotive supplier platform and led the portfolio management of U.S. and UK healthcare services platforms.

Prior to joining Safanad, Mr. Kahler was a Portfolio Manager of Private Capital at BlueMountain Capital, a global alternatives asset manager with more than $20 billion under management. He also spent several years with H.I.G. Capital as a Principal in the middle-market buyout group in New York after serving as a Vice President in 2007 with the firm’s Miami-based lower middle-market buyout group. At H.I.G., Mr. Kahler completed investments in manufacturing and healthcare as well as business and financial services.

Before he began his private equity career at Willis Stein & Partners, a Chicago-based middle-market private equity firm, Mr. Kahler worked on a variety of debt, equity and advisory assignments as a member of the Global Energy and Chemicals team in Credit Suisse First Boston’s investment banking division.

Mr. Kahler earned an M.B.A with a concentration in General Management and Economics from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in International Politics & Economics and German from Middlebury College (magna cum laude).