Stewart Kohl - The Riverside Company

1. STEWART KOHL

2. Stewart Kohl is Co-CEO of The Riverside Company, a $10 billion global private equity firm focused on investing in the smaller end of the middle market. Prior to joining The Riverside Company in 1993, Kohl was a vice president of Citicorp Venture Capital, Ltd., the private equity arm of Citibank.

3. In addition to his work with Riverside, Stewart serves as an Honorary Trustee of Oberlin College and Co-Chair of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. He is also on the Board of Trustees of Cleveland Clinic and Co-Chairs its $2 billion Power of Every One Capital Centennial Campaign. He was inducted into the Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges Hall of Excellence in 2009. He previously served as Co-Chair of the Building for Hope Capital Campaign of the Center for Families and Children. Learn more about Stewart Kohl here

4. Here are a few of selected excerpts from Stewart Kohl’s recent interviews. The lessons and insights are instructive and actionable, and of great value to anyone interested in corporate finance and the capital markets.

5. EXCERPTS FROM STEWART KOHL’S INTERVIEWS How has the art of the deal changed over the past 30 years? Thirty years ago, really, very few people knew how to buy or sell a company. It was kind of this small group of lawyers and accountants and some private equity folks from corporate development folks, the process was convoluted, it could take months or years. It culminated with scores of folks showing up in hotels and lawyers’ offices. Everything today is done virtually. It’s done digitally. It’s done seamlessly and electronically, market terms are well understood.

6. EXCERPTS FROM STEWART KOHL’S INTERVIEWS Who were some of your earliest influences and mentors? I have to give a big nod to some early mentors. Certainly, the folks at Citibank, Jim Petrus, Joe Carerras, John Kirby, Jim Mara, they were extraordinarily generous with their time and their wisdom to learn this business. Private equity, still today, really remains an apprentice business. It’s a business that you learn by doing and often, if you will, kneeling in front of somebody who knows what they’re doing.

7. EXCERPTS FROM STEWART KOHL’S INTERVIEWS How do you decide how much to invest in a company? The key to finding the right amount of capital to provide is to start with, what is the objective, then to lay out a clear strategy, and then to properly quantify what that’s going to require in terms of investment into the existing company as well as to do add on acquisitions. I think it's important that businesses have enough capital that they not be capital constrained. On the other hand, human nature being what it is, anything in abundance, too much, or free, tends to be squandered. Read more

8. Stewart Kohl is also a founding donor of VeloSano, a charity bike ride dedicated to eradicating cancer by supporting research at the Cleveland Clinic.

9. VeloSanosupports projects that will build upon and transition recent advancements in cancer research into new diagnostics and therapeutics with a high likelihood of leading to successful, future grant funding.

10. Stewart Kohl is the founder of VeloSano VeloSano Latin for “swift cure,” VeloSanois a year-round, community-driven fundraising initiative. The money raised is a culmination of many efforts, with the flagship fundraising platform being a “bike to cure” weekend. 100% of the money raised supports lifesaving cancer research at Cleveland Clinic. This brings the cumulative total to more than $21 million raised in six years. In its first five years, VeloSanohas supported 125 cancer research projects, and the $5 million raised in the first two years of VeloSanoalone has generated an additional $14 million in external research grants –a 280% return. Last July, nearly 1,600 cyclists from 24 states and two countries rode in the annual fundraising event, pedaling more than 81,000 miles to raise funds for cancer research. VeloSano7 is scheduled for July 17-19, 2020