Mr. Phillips has over 34 years
of investment management experience managing
large pools of pension assets in
the capacity of both a limited and a general partner. Prior to founding WP
Global Partners in 2005, Mr. Phillips was the Chief Investment Officer and CEO
for WestAM (U.S.), a subsidiary of WestLB, a large German Bank. At WestAM he
directed the investment strategy and oversaw the firm’s approximately $3 billion
portfolio in commitments to private equity funds, real estate, and direct
investments. In addition, he was a member of WesAM’s Board of Directors. He
assumed these roles at WestAM in 2000 when they acquired the private equity
business of Forstmann-Leff International, Inc. Mr. Phillips had been President
of Forstmann-Leff from 1997 to 2000, and during that period was responsible for
the strategic process of building and managing the global investment management
firm. Forstmann-Leff International is a multi-asset class institutional
investment firm with offices in Chicago, New York, and Liverpool, England. The
firm has been managing assets for high net worth individuals, pension funds and
other institutions for almost 30 years with assets under management that exceed
$85 billion. The styles of managing assets include U.S. mid-cap value oriented
equities, fixed income that includes core U.S., high yield and global portfolio
management in addition to the management of private placement or alternative
asset classes for large institutions
From 1990 until 1997, Mr. Phillips
was Chairman of Equity Institutional Investors where he was responsible for the
formation of four real estate funds with equity commitments of over $2.5
billion. These funds have been subsequently consolidated into a public company,
Equity Office Properties that was sold to Blackstone for $50 billion in 2007.
During the same time period at Equity Group Investments, he was instrumental in
establishing the $1.1 billion Zell/Chilmark Fund to buy good companies with bad
balance sheets. The fund acquired seven public and private companies that have
combined sales of $8 billion and over 50,000 employees. Also, Mr. Phillips was
President of Capstone Holdings Corp., a publicly traded insurance holding
company and board member of other publicly traded companies within the Equity
Group.
His previous positions include eight years as the Chief
Investment Officer for Ameritech Corporation, where he managed all asset classes
of Ameritech’s $15 billion pension fund. The Ameritech fund was an early
investor in private equity, venture capital and commercial real estate. His
efforts at Ameritech were recognized by the Institutional Investor Magazine,
which sleected him as one of the country’s top 10 pension fund managers.
Recently, he was awarded the Richard J. Daley Medal by the Illinois Venture
Capital Association which recognizes “extraordinary contributions to the
Illinois Economy resulting from private equity investing.” He has an M.B.A. in
finance from Northern Illinois University and a B.A. in business from Western
Illinois University.