Wisconsin looks to focus investment capital

As executive managing director of Mason Wells, the state’s biggest private equity firm, John Byrnes estimates he has toured about 1,000 manufacturing plants in more than 30 years of evaluating technologies and buying and selling companies.

Mason Wells was spun out of Marshall & Ilsley Corp. in 1998 from a private equity division Byrnes created for M&I in 1983. Currently, Mason Wells is investing a $525 million buyout fund.

At the request of Gov. Scott Walker, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. has a working group studying ways to use $150 million to $200 million of state tax dollars over six years for investment capital. An attempt to pass such a bill last year was stymied by concerns about the failure of a similar program a decade earlier.

In an interview, Byrnes discusses the state’s efforts to craft a new venture capital bill to bolster funding for high-potential, job-creating companies in Wisconsin.

By Kathleen Gallagher

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