Arete Capital founder Nori Gerardo Lietz once called private equity giant Lone Star Funds “the John Show” — a reference to founder John Grayken and his lack of interest in building a legacy that outlasts him.
More than a decade later, the notoriously private billionaire is about to turn 68, and the succession plan investors have been bugging him about for years is in motion.
The Dallas-based firm that specializes in distressed real estate assets has named Donald Quintin as the company’s first CEO. Grayken is still listed as Lone Star’s chairman on its website.
Quintin joined the firm in 2010. Lone Star poached him from Merrill Lynch after he negotiated a deal for Lone Star to buy $31 billion of Merrill Lynch’s mortgage-backed securities. Lone Star purchased the securities for 22 cents on the dollar, American Banker reported.
Before this promotion to CEO, Quintin was president of opportunity funds.
He joined Merrill Lynch in 2007 and became Bank of America’s head of distressed structured-debt trading when the bank bought Merrill Lynch in 2009; before that, he spent a decade at Citigroup.
Quintin started his career at Bankers Trust.
He’s a graduate of St. Lawrence University and received a post-graduate diploma from the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School
Grayken, a protege of Texas billionaire Robert Bass, founded Lone Star in 1995. Since its first fund, the firm has organized 23 funds that raised $87 billion.
Lone Star’s funds have a record of generating 20 percent returns for investors, Forbes reported.
The firm picked up distressed housing debt during the Great Recession and has since focused on buying up distressed residential mortgages worldwide.
Though Grayken is based in Ireland and the U.K. (he renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1999 to avoid taxes), Lone Star has been active in North Texas in the last few years. In 2020, the firm purchased more than 3,000 apartments from JPI. Lone Star purchased two Frisco hotels, Westin Dallas Stonebriar Golf Resort & Spa and the Sheraton Stonebriar, in 2022.
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