Team
ALLAN KARP
Co-founder of KarpReilly, LLC. Former co-CEO of Apax Partners, L.P., Apax’s U.S. operation. While at Apax, Allan was also a member of the U.S. Investment and Operating Committees and a member of the Apax Worldwide Executive Committee. Allan co-founded SKM, a private equity investment firm engaged in the acquisition and ownership of growth businesses. Allan played a key role in growing the business to a top-performing U.S. middle market firm with $1.5 billion in equity capital. At SKM Allan was a member of the Investment Committee and a member of the three-person Management Committee. He is a current member of the board of Z’Tejas, Habit Burger Grill, S.B. Restaurant Co. (Elephant Bar), Miller’s Ale House Inc., Café Rio, Inc., Comark, Inc., Spyder Active Sports, Inc., UpToDate, Inc. and Accessory Network Group, Inc. He is a former board member of, among others, Mimi’s Café, Marie Callender’s, Dollar Tree Stores, and Charlotte Russe Holdings, Inc.
Allan holds a B.S. in Chemistry from University of California – Santa Cruz and a M.S. in Management from M.I.T. Sloan School of Business. He began his career at Morgan Stanley in the firm’s Mergers and Acquisitions Department and from 1986 until his departure, he played a leading role in the creation and marketing of MSLEF II and acted as Secretary, Treasurer and as a member of the investment committee of MSLEF II. He was principally responsible for MSLEF II’s acquisition of Cullum Companies, a major southwestern food retailer in August 1988 and the acquisition of Colt Industries in May 1988.
Prior to M.I.T., Allan served as a staff scientist at Bolt, Beranek and Newman, where he designed sonar systems for the U.S. Navy. Prior to that he did graduate work in molecular and atomic physics at M.I.T. He also worked as a consultant in the technology management group at Booz-Allen and Hamilton and for IBM as part of the research group in the magnetic bubble memory development effort at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose.