The Business Builder: New Mountain Capital's Steve Klinsky

Welcome to another episode of Goldman Sachs Exchanges Great Investors. I'm Allison Mass, chairman of investment banking in Goldman Sachs' Global Banking and Markets Group, and your host for this episode. Today, I have the pleasure of sitting with Steve Klinsky, the founder and CEO of New Mountain Capital. The firm, which manages approximately $60,000,000,000 in assets, is widely recognized for its disciplined investment approach, emphasizing defensive growth, and a commitment to building high quality businesses. I'm excited to talk to Steve about his career path, his approach to improving busi

Thank you, Allison. Thanks for having me.

So, Steve, I like to start these sessions with talking about what got people interested in business and finance to begin with. And I know that for you, that goes way back to your family's clothing business in Detroit. So can you talk a little bit about how that influenced your career path?

Yeah. My grandfather and grandmother had a store in Detroit for thirty years selling women's coats and women's clothes. His name was Albert, and they called it Alberts. And then when I was a kid, shopping centers were starting to roll out. That was the new idea at the time was major shopping malls. And my dad and uncle built into a chain of stores stores as the shopping malls rolled out. So that's where I first saw business. When I was in graduate school, my true goal was to be a constitutional lawyer. I was only going to business school to appease my family that I might go back to the busines

And the rest is history.

Well, and the other thing that happened is I got my grades at law school. I'm fine. I made honors, but I was not gonna be the next Supreme Court Justice. Justice Roberts was one year ahead of me. He did become a Supreme Court justice, so I I became a lawyer in business.

You did just fine.

It's worked out okay.

So your time in graduate school was in the late seventies, which coincided with the first leverage buyout of a public company. And this ultimately led to you working here at Goldman Sachs. We're proud that you're an alum, where you cofounded the first LBO Group. So tell us about that moment in time.