Thomas Hale Email & Phone Number

Thomas Hale has over 35 years of experience in the investment management industry and has worked with many of the industry's most sophisticated asset management and investment banking firms. He presently is the Director of Strategic Planning at Confluence Investment Management LLC, a registered investment adviser that offers its clients portfolio management services focused on an array of equity, asset allocation, balanced, alternative and sector strategies, primarily through discretionary separately managed accounts and through portfolio models. Confluence had approximately $12.8 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2021. Working with others on the senior management team at Confluence, he focuses on acquisitions and strategic ventures, development of new products and new channels of distribution and other operational and strategic matters.

Chicago, Illinois, United States

Registered closed-end fund that seeks long-term capital appreciation through primary and secondary investments in private equity and venture capital funds managed by third-party managers and direct and co-investments in private operating companies.

Greater Chicago Area

After retiring from Skadden, Tom joined the Board of Directors of Caherciveen Partners, and later became a principal of the company. Caherciveen Partners was a proprietary high-frequency trading firm that utilized sophisticated algorithms as a market-maker in the U.S. Government securities and derivatives markets. He was actively involved in the development of one of the first microwave communications networks—technology linking the Chicago and New York markets—that supplanted fiber optic cable and is now the industry standard. He also worked on developing the company’s liquidity platform for marketing to banks in connection with their customer market-making activities, as well as structuring and negotiating the sale of Caherciveen Partners in 2015 to a London-based multi-billion dollar family office.

Following his retirement from Skadden, Tom joined the senior management group of a start-up company, Destra Capital Management, as its Senior Managing Director for Corporate and Strategic Development. Destra Capital was founded to partner with independent institutional investment managers that utilized unique portfolio strategies, and to develop, manage and distribute a suite of sophisticated retail investment products. Tom worked with these institutional managers, together with Destra’s advisory, marketing and distribution senior executives, to structure and develop mutual funds, closed-end funds and unit investment trusts using these portfolio strategies. He was also responsible for many other areas of Destra’s corporate development and business strategy, including the sale of Destra in 2014. At the time of the sale, Destra served as the adviser or distributor for mutual funds with over $3 billion in assets under management and provided distribution and shareholder servicing for closed-end funds with over $4 billion of assets under management.

Chicago

From 1990 – 2010, Tom was a partner and head of the firm's Investment Management Group in Chicago. At Skadden, Tom worked closely with portfolio managers and product developers at leading investment management firms. He advised sponsors and underwriters in over 150 closed-end fund IPOs, and acted as counsel on a wide variety of secondary financing transactions for these funds, including rights offerings, senior debt and preferred stock offerings and structured commercial paper programs. Tom also advised sponsors of mutual funds, ETFs and BDCs in the structuring and public offering of these funds, and served as fund counsel and as counsel to the independent directors of a fund complex. These fund offerings involved virtually every type of asset class and included the development of many innovative investment product and distribution structures, including target term funds, senior loan funds, MLP and energy infrastructure funds, foreign currency funds and "no load" closed-end funds. The sponsors of these funds included Ares Capital, Barings, BlackRock, Deutsche Bank, Dreyfus, Eaton Vance, Guggenheim, Invesco, Jardine, Nuveen, PIMCO, Putnam and Wellington, and the underwriters of these funds included Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Wells Fargo. At Skadden, Tom also worked closely with hedge fund, private equity and venture capital fund managers, proprietary trading firms and institutional investment managers. In the area of mergers and acquisitions, Tom was involved in a number of significant transactions in the asset management industry, including the sale of Van Kampen to a private equity fund managed by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and its subsequent sales to Morgan Stanley and to Invesco, the acquisition of PowerShares Capital Management by Invesco, the purchase of Nuveen Investments by an investor group led by Madison Dearborn Partners and the acquisition by Nuveen of First American Funds from U.S. Bancorp.

Chicago

Greater Chicago Area

Tom was a member of the adjunct faculty at the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught classes and seminars focusing on the investment management industry.

Juris Doctor (J.D.)

Activities and Societies: Editorial Board, Duke Law Journal; Order of the CoifTom graduated magna cum laude from the Duke University.

Bachelor'S Degree, Economics

Tom holds a B.A. in Economics with High Distinction from Northwestern University. He has served on the Board of Visitors of the College.

Education record