The InvestMichigan! Mezzanine Fund is making its first investments, deploying $130 million fund that should provide millions of dollars in seed capital to a dozen or so companies in Michigan.
"We intend to have the fund invested in a three-year timeframe," says Sean O'Donnell, a spokesman for Credit Suisse’s Customized Fund Investment Group, which co-manages the InvestMichigan! Mezzanine Fund with Farmington Hills-based venture capital firm
Beringea. "You can expect to see a pretty robust amount of deals coming from us."
The InvestMichigan! Mezzanine Fund was formed from a partnership between the State of Michigan Retirement Systems, Dow Chemical and the U.S. Small Business Administration's
Start-Up America Impact Investment SBIC Initiative. The fund will invest in lower-middle-market companies located in Michigan over the next five years. The investments must be made in Michigan-based companies or firms with a majority of their workforce or at least 200 employees in the Great Lakes State.
The first official investment went to Huron, an automotive supplier based in Lexington. It has also invested in an un-named food distribution firm in Metro Detroit. The InvestMichigan! Mezzanine Fund is also in the process of closing on its third investment in a Metro Detroit-based IT firm. The three investments would equal $13 million within the first few months of the fund's existence.
"We had a bit of a pipeline in place," O'Donnell says.
Source: Sean O'Donnell, a spokesman for Credit Suisse’s Customized Fund Investment Group
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.
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