Career
More than 35 years around privately held energy companies
In the order it happened. The dates are the ones the record supports, and where a period has no date attached it is described without one.
- BasedDallas, Texas
- First jobAnalyst, corporate finance, Goldman Sachs, New York, 1987 to 1989
- FoundedPetro Capital Group, Dallas, 2002
- Role todayManaging partner, with a seat on the committee that approves the firm's investments
- BoardsChair or director at a number of energy companies, each seat kept until the firm sells
- EducationVanderbilt University, B.A., Political Science, Phi Beta Kappa; J.D., The University of Texas School of Law; Texas bar, 1992
New York, 1987 to 1989
The first job was an analyst position in corporate finance at Goldman Sachs. Two years there gave him the mechanics of how a company is financed and, more usefully, a view of what a lender or an equity investor is actually protecting when the documents are drawn. The specialty that came out of it was the financing of energy companies, and it set the direction for everything after.
The decade of raising and investing
Through the 1990s he built a practice around privately held energy businesses, arranging capital for them and putting money in beside the owners. That is the period in which the pattern of the later career formed. An investor who has sat on both sides of a financing, as the person arranging it and the person writing the check, reads a term sheet differently from one who has only done one of those things.
Petro Capital Group, 2002 onward
He started the firm in Dallas in 2002 to back oil and gas producers and oilfield service businesses with growth capital, and he has run it since as its managing partner. He holds a seat on the committee that approves what the firm's funds invest in, and the work he oversees is the work any investor actually does: find the company, weigh the deal, help after the closing, and sell well. The firm has its own page on this site.
Board service
He has taken the chair or a director's seat at a number of energy companies since the firm began. Each seat is held the same way: stay involved, keep it until the firm sells, and know the operation well enough that the questions asked at the table are worth answering. The individual companies are not listed on this site.
Education and the law
At Vanderbilt University he read political science for a Bachelor of Arts, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and took the class writing award for journalism as well as the awards for distinction in political science and in French. He then earned a Juris Doctor at The University of Texas School of Law, passed the Texas Bar Examination in 1992, and chose business over the practice of law. The legal training stayed useful. Most of it shows up as a habit of reading a document for what it actually says.
The second track
Alongside all of this he has written three books, the latest a biography of Richard Coke, and he holds civic roles in Dallas connected with the history of the state. Those belong on the book page and the Texas history page rather than here.