A. Joseph Shepard is the President and Managing Partner of Archway Capital. He has more than twenty years of private equity experience as an intermediary, direct investor, and fund investor. His responsibilities have involved a full range of private equity investment and transaction activities. These activities have included originating, evaluating, structuring, negotiating, closing, monitoring, and exiting venture capital, buyout, and mezzanine transactions among middle-market operating companies in a broad range of industries.
Mr. Shepard is the former head of the United States Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Investment and Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) Program, a private equity fund of funds organization. Under Mr. Shepard’s oversight and direction, the Office and SBIC Program had $9.95 billion in total outstanding and committed capital among a portfolio of 370 private equity funds and SBICs. Each year, these funds invested directly in over 2,000 middle-market companies, and the organization was among the 15 largest fund of funds committed to alternative assets. As the SBA’s Associate Administrator for Investment, Mr. Shepard’s oversight responsibilities involved investment policies, strategic direction, initiatives, and covered all aspects of the organization’s operations including monitoring fund performance, analyzing direct investment transactions, approving follow-on investments, managing a staff of 80 employees and an annual budget of $11 million, and serving as the SBA’s Office representative to both the Senate and House Small Business Committees. He authorized over $775 million in follow-on capital commitments to 37 existing private equity funds, and oversaw 5 public offerings of U.S. government-backed securities totaling $1.53 billion. Additionally, Mr. Shepard was responsible for the evaluation and selection of investment managers and new private equity funds as Chair of the Investment Committee, and for the approval of new funds as a member of the Agency Committee. In these capacities, over 40 prospective funds were interviewed and he authorized more than $515 million in new capital commitments to 16 new private equity funds.
In regards to his secondary market activities involving SBICs, Mr. Shepard oversaw an additional 118 underperforming SBICs with $1.31 billion in outstanding capital. He led the development and implementation of a liquidity plan to divest select SBICs and ownership positions to the secondary market to accelerate the return of capital. The effort resulted in the largest single year return in the organization’s history with over $330 million or 25% of outstanding capital returned.
Before the SBA and founding Archway Capital, Mr. Shepard was a Director of Banc One Capital Markets, the investment banking and private equity group of Bank One Corporation, now JP Morgan Chase, which also managed seven bank-owned, non-leveraged, and leveraged SBICs. He was responsible for evaluating and processing direct equity and mezzanine investments, as well as providing merger, acquisition, advisory, and investment banking services. He was also responsible for the group’s origination activities.
Prior to Bank One, Mr. Shepard was an investment banker in the Investment Banking Department of Principal Financial Securities, now Wells Fargo Securities. He was active in public stock offerings, leveraged acquisition transactions, and private placements of debt and equity capital for a wide range of public and private companies.
He is a former investment analyst with the private equity firm Texas Pacific Capital, where he evaluated venture capital investments in early-stage growth and technology companies.
Mr. Shepard began his professional career with KPMG Peat Marwick. He holds his Series 7, 63, and 79 securities registrations as a registered representative of StillPoint Capital.
