
First Reserve may be the oldest energy-dedicated private equity fund having been founded in 1983 by John Hill, an Energy Department undersecretary in the Ford administration, and William Macaulay, an investment banker with Oppenheimer & Company. (In full disclosure, we know Mr. Macaulay and our prior employers did business with First Reserve.) These two gentlemen were early in seeking energy industry investment opportunities, starting during the industry’s first significant bust – the mid-1980s, oil-price-induced collapse. For those who experienced that period, many energy companies were victims of overleveraged balance sheets that were unsupportable when asset values collapsed in response to the dramatic oil price decline orchestrated by Saudi Arabia and the subsequent drop in activity. Often there were solid businesses underlying the debt debris, but many times the good and bad were both destroyed. During the mid- to late-1980s, by working with the banks to restructure loans and through judicious use of the U.S. bankruptcy courts, balance sheets of companies in the energy business were restructured.
First Reserve Billion Dollar Funds Struggling