Jeffrey Balash

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While Others React, I Anticipate

I serve on the board of Employbridge, an Apollo Global Management portfolio company and the largest industrial staffing firm in the US — $3 billion in revenues, 225,000+ workers placed annually. More broadly, I work with the Apollo team on new products and strategies, drawing on fifty years across private capital, investment banking, operations, and family offices on six continents.

I see strategic shifts five to fifteen years before consensus and help businesses reposition ahead of them. My track record includes initiating the first joint venture between the People’s Republic of China and a Fortune 500 company (Campbell’s Soup) — at Lehman Brothers, alongside former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke — and introducing Avon to Africa, where I established two of its most profitable businesses: Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire. In total I have been a founder or early-stage advisor to ten companies across six continents, including agribusiness, consumer products, financial services, manufacturing, and software.

I founded the Transactions Development Group at Drexel Burnham Lambert, working for Michael Milken to identify undervalued companies for both corporate acquirers and financial sponsors and to finance industry disruptors. Subsequently, I co-founded the first PE firm with a lead Asian institutional capital partner (Sanwa Bank, then the world’s largest bank). I later co-founded one of the first cloud/SaaS companies, which was purchased by Oracle; an acquirer of the successor firm founded by the same management then achieved a $13.5 billion valuation based on the successor’s innovative technology; I raised the A round for its third iteration and continue as an investor in its acquirer, Nextiva — a 25-year relationship with the same management team.