Pine Brook boosts financial services team

Pine Brook has appointed two new managing directors to its team focused on financial services investing activities.

Nicholaos Krenteras joined Pine Brook in 2006 as an associate, the firm said. Earlier in his finance career he served as vice president of portfolio development at LabMorgan, a venture capital branch of JPMorgan. He had also worked as an interest rate derivatives trader at Bank of America and as vice president of trading and business development for mortgage-backed securities brokerage firm Pedestal Capital.

Bharath Srikrishnan joins Pine Brook from Five Mile Capital, where he held the same title for almost five years and worked on Five Mile’s private equity investments in financial services companies, according to his LinkedIn profile. He had similar responsibilities at his previous position as principal at Lee Equity Partners. He had also founded a PE-backed middle market commercial finance company, NewStar Financial, which completed its IPO in 2006 after raising $204 million, reports said.

Srikrishnan began his finance career as an analyst at Salomon Smith Barney and associate at Capital Z Partners.

Pine Brook, founded in 2006, makes growth capital investments mainly in the energy and financial services sectors, according to PEI’s Research & Analytics division. It manages over $6 billion in assets.

Its Pine Brook Capital Partners II fund received commitments from investors including Arizona State Retirement System, General Electric Asset Management, New Mexico State Investment Council, NYSTRS, OPERS and Unigestion, according to PEI’s Research & Analytics. In February 2014 the fund held a final close on $2.43 billion, near its hard-cap of $2.5 billion.