The Latest News from Nine Dean
June 3, 2025
Ex-Carlyle Direct Lending Head Debuts Firm With New PE Playbook
By Dawn Lim (Bloomberg)
After years of working for the likes of private equity firms KKR & Co. and Carlyle Group Inc., Aren LeeKong is betting on a different investing model.
The former Carlyle direct lending chief is structuring his new venture, Nine Dean, as a holding company that has no deadline to exit bets. The Ford Foundation stepped up as its anchor investor.
June 3, 2025
New Holding Company Nine Dean to Invest in Quality Jobs that Drive Business Growth
Differentiated holding company structure will ensure alignment among all stakeholders, enable investment in employees, and focus on long-term value creation
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nine Dean, a newly established holding company, today announced its official launch. Backed by a significant anchor investment from the Ford Foundation and founded by a seasoned team with deep expertise across all facets of business ownership—including entrepreneurial ventures, capital markets, credit, private equity, and operations—Nine Dean will focus on acquiring middle-market businesses, a vital segment of the economy, and unlocking long-term value through operational excellence.
Nine Dean will take an innovative approach to propelling business growth, operating as a permanent holding company that aligns all stakeholders and focuses on operational improvements. The team will leverage their operational expertise to promote continual optimization and invest in their operating companies’ most valuable asset—employees—to drive profitability. In doing so, Nine Dean endeavors to generate attractive and stable risk-adjusted returns.
June 4, 2025
Backed by Ford Foundation, Nine Dean is building a holding company around quality jobs
By David Bank (Impact Alpha)
Berkshire Hathaway has long had a hold on the imagination of impact investors, and not just for its $1 trillion-plus market capitalization.
As a permanent holding company, Berkshire Hathaway can take ownership of companies, improve their operations and hold them for the long term, without the artificial deadlines imposed by the 10-year structure of typical private equity funds. That kind of patient capital and focus on operational excellence could sustain long term impact as well.
But efforts to create “the Berkshire Hathaway of impact” have foundered on asset owners’ concerns about liquidity – that is, most want to know when they’re going to get their money back.
The Ford Foundation is taking a longer view, making its largest mission investment to date to anchor Nine Dean, a new permanent holding company launched this week by Aren LeeKong, who left as head of private lending for Carlyle Group in March. Nine Dean is seeking to buy middle-market operating companies with stable cash flows and large work forces and create value by investing in what LeeKong calls their most valuable asset – their employees.