Peter J. Nanula, a corporate attorney and founder and former chief executive of Arnold Palmer Golf Management Co., has joined Newport Beach-based private equity investor ClearLight Partners LLC as a partner.
Nanula, 43, brings 18 years of experience as a chief executive, private equity investor and attorney.
His most recent private equity work was with Concert Capital Partners in San Francisco, where he served as managing partner.
Nanula, who recently moved to Newport Coast, previously was with Warburg Pincus LLC in Los Angeles.
His older brother is Richard Nanula, a former executive vice president and chief financial officer of Walt Disney Co., who left Disney in 1998 to become chief executive of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.
Richard Nanula is part of an elite group of black senior executives at major U.S. corporations. He now serves as executive vice president and chief financial officer of Thousand Oaks-based Amgen Inc.
At one time, Peter and Richard Nanula, sons of an Italian father and African-American mother, were known as “sibling CEOs” and were featured in Forbes magazine.
From 1993 to 2000, Peter Nanula was the founder and chief executive of Texas-based Arnold Palmer Golf Management, a golf course operator he grew to more than $100 million in yearly revenue via 20 acquisitions.
Earlier, Nanula handled mergers and acquisitions with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP.
Nanula earned law degrees from Harvard University.
“With his experience on both the investment and operating side he will be a great asset to the firm in identifying attractive new investment opportunities and in working with the management teams of our portfolio companies to create value,” said Michael Kaye, ClearLight’s managing partner.
“Having raised outside capital as the CEO of an acquisitive growth company myself, I know that ClearLight is a terrific partner for management teams seeking to capitalize on their growth opportunities,” Nanula said.
ClearLight Partners, which was founded in 2000, invests from a $300 million fund in companies with $5 million or more in pre-tax earnings and yearly revenue of $100 million to $300 million.
It has invested about $100 million of the fund so far, and has plans to launch a second one in the spring, Nanula said.
Japan’s Secom Ltd. is ClearLight’s original financial backer.
ClearLight typically makes investments of $10 million to $50 million in a wide variety of industries, including specialty manufacturing, consumer, education, healthcare, and outsourcing and security services.
