Transom Capital Taps Former Motive Power CEO as Operating Partner

Transom Capital Group appointed Jeff Haight as operating partner this week, adding industrial services depth to the Los Angeles-based middle-market firm's operational bench. Haight spent the past 17 years as CEO of Motive Power Industries, a platform he helped build through more than a dozen add-on acquisitions before its 2022 sale to Hillenbrand for $1.4 billion.

The hire signals Transom's continued focus on operations-heavy buyouts where post-acquisition value creation depends on somebody who's actually run the business — not just modeled it. Haight's track record includes scaling Motive Power from roughly $100 million in revenue to north of $500 million while integrating acquisitions across North America and expanding into adjacent product lines.

Transom didn't disclose Haight's compensation structure or whether he'll take board seats at existing portfolio companies. The firm manages approximately $1.7 billion across three funds and typically writes equity checks between $25 million and $100 million for companies valued at $50 million to $400 million.

"Jeff's experience building and integrating businesses in fragmented industrial markets aligns directly with our investment strategy," said Transom managing partner Kenneth Giuriceo in the announcement. "His operational leadership will be immediately valuable to our portfolio companies navigating complex growth initiatives."

Haight joined Motive Power in 2005 when the company was still a regional motive power battery manufacturer — the kind of business that supplies forklifts and material handling equipment with industrial batteries and chargers. Over the next 17 years, he executed what became a textbook buy-and-build strategy: acquire regional competitors, consolidate operations, cross-sell adjacent products, repeat.

By the time Hillenbrand acquired the business, Motive Power had absorbed companies across battery manufacturing, energy storage solutions, and power electronics — expanding from a single-product manufacturer into a diversified industrial power platform. The company operated more than 30 locations and served customers in warehousing, food and beverage, cold storage, and manufacturing verticals.

The integration work wasn't trivial. Each acquisition brought legacy systems, redundant facilities, and overlapping customer relationships that needed rationalization. Haight's team standardized manufacturing processes, consolidated purchasing across the platform, and built a national service network that became a competitive moat — customers don't switch battery suppliers easily once service contracts are in place.

That's exactly the skillset Transom is buying. The firm's portfolio tilts heavily toward fragmented sectors where the winning strategy involves rolling up subscale operators and professionalizing operations. Think HVAC distribution, specialty construction services, industrial equipment rental — industries where the top 20 players still control less than 30% market share.

Operating partner roles have proliferated across the PE industry over the past decade, but the title masks wide variation in actual responsibilities. Some OPs are glorified advisors who attend quarterly board meetings. Others function as interim CEOs parachuting into turnarounds. Haight's hire appears closer to the latter model.

Transom's current portfolio includes eight active platform companies spanning business services, niche manufacturing, and value-added distribution. At least three are executing buy-and-build strategies where Haight's experience becomes directly relevant: evaluating bolt-on targets, structuring earnouts with founder-sellers, integrating back-office systems without disrupting customer-facing operations.

The firm's investment in Apollo Mechanical Contractors — a Southern California-based MEP contractor acquired in 2021 — offers one example. Apollo has since completed multiple tuck-in acquisitions, expanding into new geographies and adding capabilities in design-build and energy efficiency projects. That's precisely the kind of platform where an operating partner who's lived through integration cycles can short-circuit expensive mistakes.

There's also the less glamorous work: helping portfolio company CEOs think through capacity expansion decisions, evaluating whether to nearshore manufacturing, navigating supply chain disruptions, implementing inventory management systems that actually work. Haight spent nearly two decades dealing with those questions in a capital-intensive business with thin margins — the kind of experience you can't simulate in a consulting deck.

What Haight didn't do — and what Transom presumably won't ask him to do — is jump into software businesses or consumer-facing companies outside his domain. The PE industry's pattern of hiring former Fortune 500 executives and dropping them into portfolio companies with zero sector overlap has produced enough cautionary tales. Haight's value proposition is narrow and deep: industrial services businesses with consolidation potential and operational complexity.

Hillenbrand's 2022 acquisition of Motive Power for $1.4 billion represented a strategic exit — not a financial sponsor-to-sponsor sale or a messy bankruptcy scenario. The buyer, a diversified industrial manufacturer, paid for platform value: national scale, sticky customer relationships, and a services model that generates recurring revenue. That outcome doesn't happen by accident in businesses where organic growth runs 3-5% annually.

Transom has built its reputation on operational value creation rather than financial engineering. The firm's Fund III, raised in 2021 at $750 million, targets companies where the thesis involves improving margins through operational fixes and executing roll-ups in fragmented sectors. Higher interest rates have made that strategy harder — but also more important.

When debt was cheap and plentiful, financial sponsors could generate returns through leverage alone. A mediocre business that grew 5% annually still delivered acceptable returns with 6x leverage at 4% interest rates. That arbitrage is gone. Today's middle-market deals are pricing at 8-11x EBITDA, and debt costs 9-11% on the high end. The only path to vintage returns is operational improvement and revenue synergies — which means you need operators who've actually done it.

Transom's existing portfolio reflects that reality. The firm's 2023 acquisition of Commercial Door & Hardware — a Minnesota-based distributor and installer of commercial doors and hardware — came with an explicit buy-and-build mandate. CDH has since added two bolt-ons, expanding into Wisconsin and Iowa. Those integrations require someone making decisions about branch consolidation, pricing harmonization, and sales team structure — not just PowerPoint slides about "revenue synergies."

The same logic applies to Transom's investment in Geotech Environmental Equipment, a manufacturer of drilling and sampling equipment for environmental and geotechnical applications. The business serves a niche market with high switching costs and regional competitors begging to be rolled up. But execution risk is real: overpay for a competitor's inflated EBITDA, botch the integration, and suddenly you own two underperforming businesses instead of one.

Haight's role, presumably, is to help portfolio company leadership teams avoid those mistakes — or fix them when they happen anyway.

Operating partner hires often telegraph where a firm is heading. Transom didn't bring on a software executive or a consumer brand specialist — they hired an industrial services operator with deep experience in fragmented markets and capital-intensive businesses. That suggests the firm's near-term deal pipeline skews toward similar opportunities: distribution businesses, specialty manufacturing, industrial services platforms.

It also signals that Transom expects its existing portfolio companies to continue pursuing add-on acquisitions. Operating partners don't generate ROI sitting in board meetings. They generate ROI helping portfolio companies evaluate targets, structure deals, and execute integrations. Haight's appointment makes sense only if Transom anticipates multiple bolt-on transactions across the portfolio over the next 12-24 months.

Transom isn't the only firm competing for operators with Haight's profile. The middle market has seen a wave of similar hires as PE firms recognize that post-pandemic operational challenges — supply chain reconfiguration, labor shortages, energy cost volatility — require more than financial modeling expertise.

Los Angeles-based Genstar Capital appointed former Rexnord executive Mark Bartlett as an operating partner in 2023. Chicago's CIVC Partners brought on former Grainger executive John Gehrich. Wind Point Partners added former SPX Flow CEO Marc Michael. The pattern is clear: firms are paying up for operators who've run P&Ls in industries that can't be disrupted by an app.

The competition for this talent pool has pushed compensation upward. Operating partners at established middle-market firms now routinely command seven-figure base salaries plus carry participation in the funds they support. For someone like Haight — who could have pursued CEO roles at larger industrial platforms or taken a lucrative board portfolio — the PE operating partner model offers leverage: influence across multiple companies without the single-company execution risk.

It's also, candidly, less stressful than running a $500 million manufacturing business through a global pandemic and supply chain crisis. Operating partners set strategy and solve problems. They don't manage HR complaints or negotiate union contracts or sit through three-hour budget reviews. The upside is capped compared to being a platform CEO, but the downside is too.

The operating partner model looks different at a $1.7 billion middle-market firm than at a $50 billion megafund. KKR's operating partners have teams beneath them and work across dozens of portfolio companies simultaneously. Transom's operating partners are embedded more deeply — fewer companies, more hands-on involvement.

That structure has advantages and constraints. On the plus side, Haight will actually know the businesses he's working with — the management teams, the customer dynamics, the competitive threats. He won't be parachuting in for quarterly board meetings armed with McKinsey benchmarking data. On the downside, if a portfolio company underperforms, there's nowhere to hide. The operating partner model at this scale is accountable.

Transom's press release mentioned Haight will "work closely with portfolio company management teams to drive operational improvements and support strategic growth initiatives." Translation: he's going to be in the weeds. That could mean traveling to facility sites to evaluate capex decisions, sitting in on negotiations with key suppliers, helping assess whether a potential acquisition target's financials are real or dressed up for sale.

It's unglamorous work. It's also the work that determines whether a middle-market buyout returns 2.5x or 1.2x.

The early scorecard for Haight's tenure will track a few specific outcomes. First, whether Transom's industrial-focused portfolio companies successfully execute add-on acquisitions without blowing up integration timelines or missing synergy targets. Second, whether those platforms improve their margin profiles through operational fixes — procurement savings, facility rationalization, overhead reduction — rather than just revenue growth. Third, whether Transom closes new platform deals in industrial sectors where Haight's involvement was a differentiator during diligence.

None of those outcomes are guaranteed. Operating partners can't force a seller to accept a reasonable valuation. They can't prevent a key customer from switching suppliers. They can't compensate for a bad initial investment thesis. But in the middle market, where deals are won or lost on operational credibility and where value creation happens through blocking and tackling rather than financial wizardry, having someone who's actually built a platform matters.

Haight's appointment also sends a signal to potential sellers and management teams: Transom isn't a financial buyer looking to optimize and flip. The firm is building businesses for the long term — or at least the private equity version of long term, which is four to six years. That positioning matters in competitive sale processes where founders care about legacy and employees care about job security.

Whether that translates into better deal flow or superior returns won't be clear until Fund III exits start materializing in 2026 and beyond. But in an environment where financial engineering has hit its limits and operational execution is the primary value lever, adding someone who's lived through the build-and-integrate cycle repeatedly is at least a logical bet.

Haight's hire is part of a larger shift in how private equity firms approach value creation. For years, the default model was to hire consultants — McKinsey, Bain, BCG — to conduct post-acquisition operational assessments. Those engagements produced detailed reports with recommendations that portfolio company management teams then struggled to implement.

The new model embeds operators directly. Instead of paying consultants $500,000 for a 12-week study, firms are hiring former CEOs and COOs as full-time operating partners who can make decisions, own outcomes, and stay engaged through implementation. The economics are different — operating partners cost more on an annual basis but deliver more tangible impact.

That shift reflects a broader maturation of the PE industry. When returns were driven by multiple expansion and leverage, operational improvements were nice-to-have. Today, with entry multiples elevated and exit multiples compressed, operational improvements are the returns. That changes the talent profile firms need: less financial modeling horsepower, more people who've actually run something.

It also changes the risk profile. When a consultant delivers bad advice, the PE firm fires the consulting firm and moves on. When an operating partner makes a bad call — greenlighting an acquisition that destroys value, pushing a facility consolidation that backfires — the firm owns it. That accountability is forcing PE firms to be more selective about who they hire into these roles and more realistic about what operating partners can achieve.

Haight's track record reduces some of that risk. He's already proven he can build a platform, integrate acquisitions, and deliver a successful exit. Whether he can replicate that across multiple portfolio companies simultaneously — in different subsectors, with different management teams, under different market conditions — is the open question. But Transom is betting he can. And in a market where operational execution is the scarce resource, that's the bet to make.