Prakash Chandak
Co-Founder/ GP/ CEO/ CIO
Prakash is a seasoned finance professional with 25 years of Wall Street experience and expertise across cash, derivatives and structured finance from investing, trading, pricing & valuations, risk management/ hedging, and funding. He started his career at Barclays Capital, New York and after a couple of years, joined Goldman Sachs, New York, and ended up spending a little over a couple of decades there.
With over two decades at Goldman Sachs, his expert boasts of a strong Wall Street network and proficiency in multiple products and asset classes as it relates to private equity, IPOs, structured credit, special & illiquid situations, and other off market opportunities. He has a deep understanding of valuing/modelling targets/portfolio companies with complicated capital structures and at different stages of growth using myriad of valuation techniques like multiples on PE/PB/revenue and other industry comparables, real options techniques on cap structure using simulation, DCF, NPV/IRR, and more nuanced techniques for non-traditional/ tech/ fin tech companies, such as CVM, PWERM or hybrid, and valuing mezzanine debt, distressed investing, leveraged loans and its impact on overall cap structure with focus on private growth capital & client expectations.
Deal expertise in alternatives include SPAC/ de-SPAC transactions, secondaries (both private and public), hard asset boring situations but with good cash flow fundamentals, credit warehousing, private credit & distressed situations, Structured Credit (CLN, CDO, equity tranches linked to CDS, 15 - 20% IRR with wider credits), opportunistic trades and other off-the-ramp situations.
His ability to interact with Board, C-suite, investors, legal, compliance, internal committees, external auditors, and stakeholders, with insights into fund valuation, long term value and impact makes him an ideal partner to run a sustainability focused PE fund.
He possesses a deep understanding of climate change science and policy. His experience extends to valuing complex capital structures and a keen involvement in ESG investments and market analysis. Across both public and private markets, he has an in-depth understanding of the risk neutral capital pricing, market making and asset allocation, alpha generation, valuing/modelling targets/portfolio companies with complicated capital structures including mezzanine debt, distressed investing, leveraged loans and its impact on risk and returns.
He Chairs the Wharton Club of New York’s Sustainable Finance Networkand conducts training sessions on financial products, markets, risk and valuations and guest lectures at various American universities. He holds a BS in Economics/ Finance from the University of Delhi’s prestigious SRCC school and an MBA in Finance & Strategy from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. He holds Series 7 and Series 66 FINRA licenses, and he also holds a mathematical modeling certificate from Penn State University and is a Financial Risk Manager (FRM) and Energy Risk Professional (ERP) Charter holder.