For the publicly held Coinmach Corp., the largest supplier of laundry room services for multifamily housing, and AnswerThink Consulting, an IT consulting firm, the common thread is Chicago's GTCR Golder Rauner, a venture capital firm with a niche for the mundane. Managing principal Bruce Rauner makes big returns assembling fragmented-industry players into market share leaders.
Internet services are the next target.
GTCR has successes of its own. The company evolved from founder Stanley Golder's success growing First Chicago Bank's moribund private equity practice into the Midwest's largest source of private capital through the 1970s. Experienced people grew out of First Chicago to start venture funds like Madison Dearborn Partners and Boston's Summit Partners. That now-closed fund returned 11 times invested capital with winners like PageNet, the first nationwide paging giant. Two years later, the firm came to an interesting crossroads.