John W. Kennedy is a career investment banker for “emerging growth” companies.
John “Whit” Kennedy has forty-two years of experience in investment
banking.
He started at Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. (KPMG) in 1983, then at Morgan Stanley
& Co. and at D.H. Blair & Company. During his six years as a Vice President and
Managing Director at D.H. Blair he specialized in merchant banking and Initial
Public Offerings (IPOs) for “micro” and “small cap” emerging growth companies.
During that period he participated in raising over $70 million for eight companies in
which D.H. Blair made equity investments (“merchant banking”), including ten
private placements, three pre-IPO “Bridge” financings, and six IPOs (“Initial Public
Offerings”).
D.H. Blair.
In January of 1995 John moved to Brazil when he was asked to build an
international investment banking practice for Banco SRL, a market leader in lending
to small to middle-market companies. In June 1996 he was recruited by Banco
Fonte-Cindam to open and Head their U.S. brokerage firm Fonte-Cindam Securities.
He subsequently closed the first Brazilian “small cap” IPO on NASDAQ, $22 million
by Vitech America Inc. In November 1997 he was recruited by Banco Fibra to Head
Fibra Securities in NY, where he immediately structured and raised for Vitech
America $41.3 million in Global Medium Term Notes, another pioneering transaction
for a Brazilian “emerging growth” company.
In December of 1999 John founded Kennedy Partners, an advisory
firm and merchant bank for “micro” and “small-cap” Brazilian companies. Over the
ensuing years, Kennedy´s advisory engagements have expanded to North
America. His clients have included pioneers and leaders in their sectors, such as Vitech
America, Inc., Intercontinental Telecommunications Corp., Alliant Energy International,
Inc., CTF Technologies Inc., BioClean Energy S/A, SeqLL Inc., ICaPath Inc.,
Sunom Therapeutics Inc. and Belluno Organics LLC.
In merchant banking activities, John and his partners have founded a number of “start-ups”
in Brazil and the US, specifically MasterLink Automação e Segurança Ltda.,
BioPetro Participações S/A, Resource Holdings, Inc. (RHI Mineracao Ltda.), AgriVest
Americas, Inc. Eucalis Comercial de Madeiras Ltda., Brazil Timber Corporation and Brazil
Gold Corporation in Brazil, and more recently BlueCard Inc., BioCarbonGrow LLC. and Sunom
Therapeutics Inc. in the United States, investing a total of $2.55 million while also
raising $21,2 million in total.
John was very active on the Board of Governors of the American Society of Sao Paulo, a
philanthropic non-profit institution, where he has served as a Board Member from 2005 to
2018. Since moving back to the US in 2018, John has been very active
playing baseball in three veteran leagues in the Boston area as well as golf and
tennis at the Ridge Club of Sandwich where he is a member. He
holds an M.B.A. in Finance and International
Business from New York University (1983), a B.A. in Economics and French from
Union College (1979), and a HS Diploma from Northfield Mt. Hermon School (1975).
Mission Statement
We raise capital for companies led by world-class businessmen who are on the path to
building a highly-valued enterprise.
Leaders of these companies require a financial adviser who understands their particular
challenges and who has a superior understanding of the capital markets in order to
bring them capital and solutions under any market condition.
