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Walter L. Schindler
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Walter L. Schindler is an American businessman. He is the founder and managing partner of SAIL Capital Partners LLC and is the current chairman and CEO of the SAIL Capital LLC merchant bank. Schindler was a co-founding director of the Southern California Entrepreneurship Academy and the co-founder of a $10 million private investment fund. He was the founder, chairman, and the chief executive officer at Odyssey Strategic Partners, LLC (later renamed SAIL Holdings LLC) since September 1999. In 2014 Schindler was elected to the Board of Directors of Fulbright Canada, the Foundation for Educational Exchange between Canada and the United States of America, which provides all Fulbright Scholarships between the two countries. Education Schindler was an Eagle Scout. He was recruited to the first coed class at Yale University where he earned his B.A. in 1973. In 1974-75 he studied as a Fulbright Scholar in Italy, attended the University of Florence, studied Dante under the leading Dante scholar Professor Francesco Mazzoni, and translated Italian poetry into English. After spending a year in Italy, he returned to Yale and earned his M.A. in 1976 and Ph.D. in 1977. At Yale Graduate School he was awarded the Mary Cady Tew Prize in 1975 (then awarded by the Yale Faculty to the best first-year graduate student in the humanities and social sciences). In 1980 he earned his J.D. with honors from Harvard Law School where his mentor was Watergatespecial prosecutor Archibald Cox. Career Prior to SAIL Capital, Schindler was the lead strategic advisor in over 60 successful mergers, acquisitions, and IPO’s as well as over 25 renewable power projects. His assignments included advising Pacific Mutual Life Insurance with regard to the creation and execution of the exit strategy for its investment in PIMCO and working on the IPO of Ultrasystems Inc., the first renewable power project developer to go public in the USA. He has 35 years of broad and deep experience in energy and renewable power projects and related exit experience. Schindler also served as the partner in charge of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Orange County, California office, which grew under his leadership to one of the largest and most successful offices in its worldwide network. His 19-year career at this leading international law firm included advising clients on some of the most successful IPO’s and mergers in the US during that time, including Allergan, Callaway Golf, Fluor, Pacific Mutual Life Insurance Company (regarding the spinoff of PIMCO), PacifiCare (regarding its merger with FHP), SafeGuard Health, and Ultrasystems. Walter has been a member of the North American Advisory Board of The Cleantech Group and the Advisory Board of US Bank, and is a long-standing member of the Chief Executive Round table of the University of California at Irvine. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of The Cleantech Open, the world’s largest accelerator of Cleantech companies, based in Silicon Valley. Sail Ventures In 1999, after his parents and younger brother died of degenerative diseases all within three years, Schindler left behind his law career and divorced his first wife. Looking for "something new and potentially world-changing," Schindler launched SAIL Capital in 2001. He originally called it Odyssey but then switched the name when not enough people understood the Homeric reference. Sail Venture Partners became one of the nation's leading clean-tech venture capital investment firms with headquarters in Costa Mesa and branches in New York and Washington. Schindler was responsible for co-managing all aspects of SAIL Capital's operations and investments. Under his leadership SAIL Capital has been selected by the World Economic Forum as a member of its Community of Global Growth Companies and was nominated for Private Equity Manager of the Year by Foundation & Endowment Money Management. In addition, SAIL Capital was chosen by the U.S. Department of Commerce to co-lead with Deutsche Bank the first U.S. Trade Mission on Clean Energy to Germany and to participate in the first Impact & Sustainable Investment Trade Missions to Europe with investor meetings in Zurich, Amsterdam, and London. In January 2015 a new SAIL Capital affiliate was formed as a merchant bank to combine strategic advisory services with investment management of private client accounts for a range of large and unique special projects ranging from sustainable real estate and infrastructure to transformational growth opportunities in any global sector or market. This mission is pursued in strategic partnership with Frost & Sullivan, a leading international consultancy focused on transformational growth opportunities. Strategic and Advisory Investment Activities 1980-1987 Advised Ultrasystems Inc. on its IPO (1981), growth strategy and exit (1988) as the first renewable power project developer in the US to go public; member of the key management team that created and executed the growth strategy for developing, designing, engineering, constructing and operating many of the first US renewable power projects in the 1980s. 1985 Ultrasystems public stock became the single best performing stock in the USA on either NASDAQ or NYSE. 1987 Elected partner of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. 1980-1999 Represented the emerging growth companies in Southern California; for example, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers grew from a single person start-up to the largest corporate computer training company in the world. 1989-1991 Represented Security Pacific National Bank in all of its LBO loan transactions, including the largest loan in its bank history; all of those loans were successfully repaid, even distressed loans. Merged into Bank of America. 1992-1994 Represented Pacific Life Insurance Company in creating the growth and exit strategy for PIMCO, the world’s largest bond manager, increasing the enterprise value from the first bid by Bill Gross of $70 million through the $2 billion IPO to the $5 billion sale of 2/3’s ownership to Allianz,followed by sale of last third ownership for an additional $5 billion. PIMCO grew under Allianz to be the largest bond manager in the world with $2 trillion of assets under management (AUM). 1996 Recruited all outside board members of the Remedy Temp Board of Directors and created the growth and IPO strategy for Remedy Temp, a temporary staffing company. Its IPO became the second best performing IPO of 1996, underwritten by Dillon Read; the enterprise value grew during this period of Schindler’s advice from a $3 million private company owned by Bob McDonough in 1990 to a $200 million public company in 1996. Schindler represented the founder in connection with the gift naming the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. 1995-1998 Created Aeneas Investments LLC, a new $10 million hedge fund with only one limited partner,invested only in public securities, managed all buy decisions with a proprietary value based investment method, created, exited all holdings in 1998 with a 56% IRR and 4.4X multiple; made a noteworthy early investment in Fair Isaac & Company (inventor of the FICO score, a pioneering machine-learning algorithm company) prior to adoption of the FICO score by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the US credit industry. Also invested early in the first rational drug design company, Agouron Pharmaceuticals, which eventually was acquired by Pfizer Inc. at an exponential multiple. 1999 Retired from Gibson Dunn & Crutcher after three years as managing partner of the Orange County office. 2000 - 2002 Founded SAIL Capital Partners as one of the first pioneers of clean energy and clean water investments; early pioneering investments in water technology, energy storage and energy efficiency, currently exiting all investments. 2006 - 2015 SAIL Capital co-invested in water technology companies with Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Tata Power, Diageo, US AID, Acumen Fund, and A.K.Khan& Co. Ltd. 2010 One of three nominees for Private Equity Manager of the Year selected by Investment Management Network (IMN). 2012 Selected by the US Commerce to co-lead three US trade missions to Europe on sustainable investment. 2015 - 2016 SAIL’s company Water Health International Inc. provides modular clean water systems to rural villages, serving six million people daily. In 2016 the company became cash-flow positive and profitable. Books Schindler is the author of a book of original poetry, The Napoleon House published by Archon Books, and a book on the life and poetry of John Milton, Voice and Crisis: Invocation in Milton’s Poetry, also published by Archon Books. See Also
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