Pivotal Group is pleased to announce that Anton Orlich has joined Pivotal Group and will serve as Managing Director of its Private Equity practice. Orlich has been appointed to replace Jerry Pence, who recently left Pivotal Group to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations.

Orlich will oversee the Private Equity acquisition and management activities of Pivotal Group. He is responsible for all aspects of the investment transaction process, including investment sourcing and underwriting, transaction structuring and negotiation, and portfolio company board oversight. Orlich also sits on Pivotal Group’s Investment Committee, which concentrates on Private Equity and Real Estate.

Pivotal Group’s Private Equity practice is actively seeking control positions in growth or stressed/distressed companies with revenues between $50 million and $500 million. Pivotal Group is industry agnostic in its investment approach; however, companies or corporate spinoffs in the telecommunications, technology, media, aerospace, and business and financial services industries have been a particular focus for Pivotal in recent years.

Before joining Pivotal Group, Orlich was a Portfolio Manager in Private Equity with a specialization in co-investments at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) in Sacramento, the United States’ largest pension fund. He also underwrote opportunities in direct investments, funds, separately managed accounts, and secondaries. Orlich was one of five voting members of CalPERS’ committee for portfolio allocation, which focuses on the risk positioning of the approximately $300 billion pension.

Previously, Orlich was a strategic management consultant in the New York office of McKinsey & Company specializing in Private Equity and Valuation; a Vice President at Neuberger Berman in New York City, where he served as an Associate Portfolio Manager for equity and equity-income portfolios; and a Lead Portfolio Manager and a senior member of the Investment Committee at the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System (PSPRS) in Phoenix.

Orlich holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University, where he was a Prize Teaching Fellow, and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Economics from Columbia College, Columbia University. Orlich is a Harry S. Truman Scholar, a fellow of the Flinn-Brown Civic Leadership Academy, and an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Orlich lives in Paradise Valley.