The Operating Principle That Has Guided H.I.G. Capital Since Day One
Most private equity firms describe themselves as operational investors. Fewer actually mean it. Sami Mnaymneh, the co-founder and CEO of H.I.G. Capital, has spent more than 30 years trying to be one of the exceptions — and the firm’s track record across more than 400 investments suggests the distinction has mattered.
H.I.G., which Mnaymneh launched in Miami in 1993 alongside co-founder Tony Tamer, built its early reputation by acquiring mid-sized businesses that needed more than capital. They needed management attention, process discipline, and sometimes structural overhaul. H.I.G.’s investment team was staffed accordingly — with professionals who had spent time running businesses, not just analyzing them.
That approach has been replicated across the firm’s expanding range of strategies. The direct lending business at H.I.G. WhiteHorse structures loans with what the firm calls a “PE-style” of credit underwriting — a phrase that implies the same hands-on scrutiny applied in equity investments. The real estate and infrastructure arms similarly emphasize operational repositioning over passive ownership.
Sami Mnaymneh on Building for the Long Term
Mnaymneh graduated first in his class from Columbia University before completing dual graduate degrees — a law degree and an MBA — at Harvard. He worked at Morgan Stanley and later as a managing director at The Blackstone Group before leaving to start H.I.G. At every stage, his trajectory followed a logic of deepening expertise rather than diversifying away from it. He has served on the Board of Columbia College and the Dean’s Council of Harvard Law School, academic commitments that reflect an ongoing investment in the talent pipelines his firm draws from. Mnaymneh is one of Florida’s wealthiest individuals — a wealth built not through a single transaction but through decades of compounding returns on hundreds of middle-market deals.
“H.I.G.’s mission is to work closely with our portfolio companies to generate superior investment returns,” Mnaymneh has said. “Our hands-on expertise and a values-driven culture give us a powerful competitive advantage.”
That quote is easy to dismiss as boilerplate. The firm’s deal history makes it harder to do so. H.I.G. has backed companies ranging from veterans’ telehealth providers to European occupational health platforms, industrial equipment suppliers, and direct-to-consumer jewelry brands — businesses with little in common except that each carried a credible thesis for operational improvement under active ownership.
Growth Without Losing the Thread
H.I.G. now operates across seven strategies and 19 offices, managing $70 billion for a global limited partner base that includes sovereign wealth funds, pensions, endowments, and family offices. Each expansion has been framed as an extension of the core model rather than a pivot away from it. The recently launched GP Solutions Platform, which will target continuation fund transactions in the middle market, fits that framing: it deploys H.I.G.’s existing network of relationships with more than 800 private equity managers toward a new but adjacent opportunity. The firm’s European buyout business has grown through dedicated funds, including a €1.1 billion European Capital Partners vehicle, applying the same mid-market thesis to fragmented European industries.
Recent hires suggest the same discipline at the talent level. Harrison B. Davis joined as managing director on the Small-Cap & Growth team, bringing more than 15 years of lower middle-market private equity experience. The GP Solutions team arrived from Morgan Stanley with deep secondaries backgrounds. Each addition has been aimed at specific capability gaps rather than general headcount growth. The firm is actively seeking to expand its secondaries capability as part of a broader effort to serve middle-market sponsors across more of the fund lifecycle.
H.I.G.’s current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined revenues exceeding $53 billion. Whether the firm can sustain its operating-first culture as it pushes past $70 billion in assets is the central tension in its story. Mnaymneh’s bet is that it can — that the principles he built into H.I.G. at its founding are durable enough to hold at scale.