This is one profile in a set on the operators that AE Industrial Partners hires as its operating partners, the people a private equity firm pays to guide the companies it owns. The pattern behind who gets the seat is laid out in Built to Be Bought. Wayne Garrett earned his through two credentials that reinforce each other. He co-founded a company that sold, and he has spent his career as the person who keeps the money straight.
Co-founder of the same turbine company, on the finance side
Garrett co-founded Power Systems Manufacturing, known as PSM, and served as its chief financial officer from the company's 1998 inception through its sale to Calpine in 2000 and then to Alstom in 2007, according to his AE Industrial bio. PSM was formed in 1998 in Jupiter, Florida to make engineered turbine and combustion aftermarket components for heavy-duty industrial gas turbines, a fact recorded in a contemporaneous SEC filing. He is the finance half of the same founding story told by Thomas Churbuck, the company's President and CEO. Two of AE Industrial's operating partners co-founded the very same business.
The company they built kept appreciating after they sold it. Alstom acquired PSM from Calpine in 2007 for 242 million dollars, a sale approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court during Calpine's restructuring, per Reliable Plant.
A career as the person who keeps the books
Before PSM, Garrett was CFO of the consumer-audio company Cambridge SoundWorks, traded on Nasdaq under the ticker HIFI, and he carried it through its 1997 sale to Creative, whose cash tender offer was 10.68 dollars per share, per the SEC tender documents. Earlier he held finance roles at the interim-management and turnaround firm Argus Management Corp. and at Price Waterhouse, per his AE Industrial bio. He holds a bachelor's degree and an MBA from Boston College and is a Certified Public Accountant.
The door he walked through
Garrett is a founder-built-and-sold profile with a finance spine. He joined AE Industrial in 2007 and served for years as the firm's own chief financial officer before moving into the operating-partner role, where his work now centers on onboarding and monitoring new portfolio investments, transaction accounting, and special projects, per his AE Industrial bio. The seat rests on a rare combination: he has sat in the founder's chair when a company sells, and he has been the person a private equity firm trusts to read every number behind a deal.
Related reading
- Built to Be Bought: the full playbook of building a company to be bought and keeping the equity after.
- Thomas Churbuck and the turbine-parts company he sold twice: his co-founder at PSM.
- Les Daniels, the twenty-year co-investor: the financier on the same bench.
- Mano Nazar, who ran a nuclear fleet: the operator's version of the same story.
Fact-check notes and sources
- Operating Partner at AE Industrial; former CFO of the firm, joined 2007; co-founder and CFO of PSM from its 1998 inception through the Calpine and Alstom sales; Boston College degrees and CPA: his AE Industrial bio.
- PSM formed in 1998 in Jupiter, Florida: the company's SEC filing.
- Alstom's 242 million dollar purchase of PSM from Calpine in 2007: Reliable Plant.
- CFO of Cambridge SoundWorks through its 1997 sale to Creative at 10.68 dollars per share: the SEC tender documents. The total value of the Cambridge SoundWorks sale, and Calpine's original 2000 purchase price of PSM, are not stated in the sources found.
This post is informational and journalistic, describing publicly reported people, companies, and transactions. It is not investment, tax, legal, or M&A advice. All parties are discussed from public records and their own published statements as nominative fair use, with no affiliation implied and nothing endorsed by them.
