Bill Hagerty

Gov.-Elect Bill Haslam has chosen private-equity executive William F. "Bill" Hagerty IV as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, succeeding Gov. Phil Bredesen's Matt Kisber.

Hagerty has most recently been co-founder and managing director of Hagerty Peterson & Company LLC, a merchant bank and private equity firm. Previously, he worked with Silicon Valley PE Trident Capital and with the Boston Consulting Group, according to Jan. 9 Haslam Transition Team release. Two days earlier, the next governor named another attorney, Richard Roberts, to join his Cabinet as Commissioner for Revenue, the post held during most of the Bredesen Administration by Reagan Farr.

The Hagerty Peterson website explains that Hagerty is onleave from the firm, as well as from his board role with a TNInvestco fund, Tennessee Community Ventures. Hagerty and wife Chrissy have four children.

Excerpts from the Hagerty Peterson site: At Trident, Hagerty "conducted the initial due diligence and co-invested with Trident in the popular internet site, Mapquest, which 3 years later went public (Nasdaq: MQST) and then was acquired through a public tender by AOL Time Warner (NYSE: TWX/AOL). He was also affiliated with Ultra Stores, the nation’s fifth largest jeweler where he served as COO and CFO following a restructuring and served as a member of the company’s Board of Directors and Audit Committee. He has served on the Boards of Birch Telecom, one of the nation’s largest competitive exchange carriers; CyMed, Inc as a founder and Co-Chairman of the nations’ third largest medical records company, subsequently merged with NYSE-traded PLDT (NYSE:PHI); NEW Customer Services Company, as Vice-Chairman of the nation’s largest electronics warranty administrator (merged with Asurion); as well as home entertainment retailer, Sound Advice (Nasdaq: SUND). Mr. Hagerty served from 2005 until January 2007 as an interim CEO of Powerway, Inc -- a global automotive supply chain management software company with offices in the midwestern United States, Mexico, Germany and China. And in 2007 thru early 2008, Bill served as CEO of ALAM, Ltd, a joint venture private equity investment platform majority owned by Lehman Brothers, which he helped establish with offices in Hong Kong and Beijing, China."

Hagerty earned his economics degree at Vanderbilt University and his J.D. at Vanderbilt School of Law. He is a former volunteer national finance chairman for Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney; and, he participated during the administration of President George W. Bush on the President's Council on Competitiveness and White House domestic policy staff, according to the Haslam release. VNC