About

Gator Capital Management is a boutique investment management firm dedicated to the professional management of focused, high‐quality growth investment portfolios for high‐net worth individuals and institutions. Gator’s Investment Philosophy is to build portfolios of stocks by viewing each stock purchase as an investment in the underlying business, by investing in high‐quality growth businesses, and by focusing its portfolios on its best ideas.

Gator Capital’s Investment Philosophy is unique. First, we buy stocks as if we were buying the entire business. We do not view stocks as speculative trades to be tossed aside in a few days or months. Next, we focus on high-quality businesses. A high-quality business has a durable competitive advantage that enables it to earn excess returns for long periods of time. Then, we eliminate companies that are not trading at a significant discount to intrinsic value.  Last, Gator’s portfolio managers build concentrated portfolios, averaging just 30 positions — we build each portfolio focused on our best ideas to create wealth for our clients.

At Gator Capital, we offer three traditional investment portfolios for our clients.  We offer investment portfolios targeted to different size companies (Large, Small and Micro.)  Each portfolio uses Gator underlying investment philosophy of buying high quality businesses at attractive prices and owning them for extended periods of time.  This strategy reduces taxes and trading costs, which should help enhance long-term after-tax returns for our clients.

Gator Capital was founded by Derek Pilecki.  Derek has the ultimate responsibility for all investment decisions. He manages a long-short hedge fund focused on the financial services sector and three traditional long-only portfolios.

From 2002 through 2008, Derek was a co-Chair of the Investment Committee and a Portfolio Manager for Goldman Sach’s Growth Equity Team, where he helped to manage $30 billion in high quality growth stocks.

Derek was also a member of the portfolio management team responsible for the Goldman Sachs Capital Growth Fund, and provided primary coverage of the financial sector for the Growth Team.  Prior to Goldman, Derek was an Analyst at Clover Capital Management in Rochester, New York and Burridge Growth Partners (now part of Essex Investments) in Chicago, Illinois. Before entering graduate school, Derek worked at Fannie Mae providing risk analysis for the company’s mortgage investment portfolio.

Derek holds an MBA with honors in Finance and Accounting from the University of Chicago and a BA in Economics from Duke University.