Franklin Olakunle Amoo
Franklin Olakunle Amoo is a founding Partner of the Baylis Funds, an investment management firm focused on making growth equity investments in middle market manufacturing and industrial assets on a pan-African basis, as well as the Chairman and Managing Director of Whitman Group Holdings, an Africa focused family investment firm with holdings in agribusiness, renewable energy, media, property management, auto leasing & retail, engineering, textiles, e-commerce and apparel.
Prior to co-founding Baylis Funds and the Whitman Group, Franklin led the Strategic Credit Group at Mizuho Securities USA, overseeing the firm’s activities with regards to originating, structuring and trading illiquid and real assets. At Mizuho, Franklin helped establish the CLO, High Yield sales and trading, secondary loan trading, structured finance and asset finance businesses;.his mandate included originating, structuring and syndicating private capital raising and overseeing the secondary loan and trade claims trading businesses. Having spent roughly 15 years working for a number of Wall Street firms across roles in proprietary credit trading, principal investments, investment banking, research and institutional sales & trading, Franklin’s expertise has been in structuring and arranging project & asset finance, infrastructure, energy, export credit backed, asset finance, leasing, securitizations, contract monetization and specialty finance transactions in developed, emerging and frontier markets. He has developed recognized expertise in macroeconomic and fundamental credit analysis. Franklin began his career as an analyst in the Media & Telecom Investment Banking Group at Bank of America after spending 2 years as an undergraduate research associate in the Equity Research Group of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.
Franklin chairs the Loan Market Association’s Task Force on African Secondary Loan Trading, serves on the China Market Committee of the Structured Finance Industry Group, serves on the advisory board of Africa GreenCo and is a founding member of the Wharton African Students Association Alumni Advisory Board. Mr. Amoo is in service to the boards of the Collegiate School Alumni Executive Council, the Columbia University Young Lions Alumni Council, Prep for Prep and the Unity Preparatory Charter School of Brooklyn, chairs the board of the Fort Greene Family Support Group and formerly served as a director on the Executive Board of the United Nation Foundation’s Young Professionals.
Franklin is a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst and holds a BA in Economics from Columbia University as well as an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he was both a Howard E. Mitchell and a Venture Incubation Program Fellow.