Our Approach

In 1992, Cerberus is founded during the U.S. Savings and Loan Crisis seeing the opportunity to acquire undervalued corporate debt. Our Corporate Credit platform has since invested well over $35 billion.

In 1995, we saw the opportunity to lend directly from private funds to growing middle-market companies. Today, direct lending private credit is a $2 trillion AUM industry.

By the late 1990s, Cerberus saw the value of having in-house operational experts from situations where debt converted into ownership stakes. The seeds of Operational Private Equity were planted, a common private equity model today.

Responding to the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s taught us the value of going all-in on building a sizable team to solve complexity and respond to fundamental market dislocations.  

In the early 2000s, Cerberus took this principle and became a first mover in building a Non-Performing Loan franchise in Europe.  

In the late 2000’s, at a time when many investors were fleeing the market, we built an experienced team to invest in mortgages, loans, and real assets with proprietary operations to help manage risk.

During the post-GFC period, we continued to grow many of our established investment platforms and launched new operating capabilities.

In Europe, we established loan servicing practices with local and regional knowledge and became a trusted partner to leading European financial institutions.  

In the United States we expanded our private equity focus on defense and government sectors, notably acquiring DynCorp International, a leading government services contractor for $1.5 billion.

In 2018, we launched Cerberus Technology Solutions, an operating company focused exclusively on leveraging emerging technology, data, and advanced analytics.  

We also began establishing a dedicated team of government and policy experts to work with our investment, technology and operations teams on areas where the United States had critical gaps.

As a result, Cerberus was able to make strategic investments in areas such as subsea fiber optic cable systems, undersea defense technologies, and hypersonics.

With the conviction that national security and supply chain investing was a generational need, we continued to add leaders to our government, technology, and operations teams.

In 2021, we began raising dedicated funds for national security and supply chain investments. Our Supply Chain strategy launched with $2.7 billion of total commitments. In 2022, we added venture investing in early-stage companies with pioneering technologies for commercial and government applications.

Today, our Supply Chain strategy continues to establish itself as a leader through investments in aerospace, defense, energy, critical minerals, water technologies, quantum computing, and more.