RedBird’s investments are split into four units: energy, communications, opportunistic investments, and sports, leisure and hospitality. Earlier this year, Cardinale expanded the fourth division to include advisory services, calling it RedBird Sports Group. Alec Scheiner and Brent Stehlik, who both joined from the Cleveland Browns, help run the unit, which recently advised a client interested in buying the Carolina Panthers.
“Everybody today loves sports, and they tend to have stars in their eyes. It’s like the new Hollywood,” Cardinale said. “The challenge for us is how to play that game, not make mistakes, and win.”
Whether RedBird can forge a new path deploying the capital of rich families remains to be seen. While it’s a great marketing pitch, turning away large pools of institutional capital has proved difficult for money managers needing to retain talented employees. Moreover, some of Redbird’s investments are still organized as private-equity vehicles, with few, if any, structural requirements that they be held long-term.
Its executives acknowledge they haven’t found a tailor-made solution to these challenges. But a desire to build something novel is part of what persuaded Rob Klein to leave his job as head of alternative investments at JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s private bank and become a RedBird partner.
“None of us wants this to be a $40 billion, 400-person private-equity firm,” said Klein, who oversees operations and investor relations.
The best way to ensure that doesn’t happen, Cardinale said, is to remain as lean and ravenous as the big green guy who guards the firm’s entrance.
“I want people to look at RedBird and say, ‘Those guys are the Navy SEALs of the industry,’” he said. “These are scrappy, hungry, entrepreneurial guys.’”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.