Phil Knight: Is there a single family office?

Where does the fortune of Phil Knight come from?

Philip Knight is an American business magnate and philanthropist. A native of Oregon, he is the co-founder and former chairman of Nike and previously served as CEO of the company. As of October 2019, Knight was ranked by Forbes as the 21st richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of 37.6 billion U.S. dollars. Today Nike is the biggest sports goods producer worldwide with almost 40 billion U.S. dollars in revenues. Phil Knight also owns the stop motion film production company Laika.

How did the Knight family business develop?

Nike, originally known as Blue Ribbon Sports, was founded by University of Oregon track athlete Phil Knight and his coach, Bill Bowerman, on January 25, 1964. In their first year of business they sold 1,300 pairs of Japanese running shoes out of the back of their car. 2 years later the company opened its first store in Santa Monica. Due to rapidly increasing sales, BRS expanded retail and distribution operations on the East Coast. By 1980, Nike had attained a 50% market share in the U.S. athletic shoe market, and the company went public in December of that year. Today Nike generates almost 40 billion U.S. dollars in revenues and employs 76,000 workers.

Is there a Phil Knight family office?

While Phil Knight does not own a single family office directly related to him, he is engaged in “Oak Hill Capital Partners”, the private equity investment firm of Robert Bass.

How does the Knight family office invest?

Oak Hill Partners mainly invests in middle market companies active in the fields of consumer, retail, distribution, industrial, media and communication. But besides of that investments are also made up by startups and real estate assets. For example, Oak Hill Partners acquired a stake in Pulsant, a company operating in the growing managed data center services and cloud computing market. Besides investing through Oak Hill Capital, Phil Knight also made private investments such as “Tout”, which he funded in a series B funding round. The company developed a personalized TV technology with the first patented AI technology that delivers targeted video programming based on personal user’s attributes and location.

This article is part of our detailed report “The single family offices of the richest US families“

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