Like father like son – two private investment offices of sons of top investors make waves

In life, it helps to have a headstart. And two sons of successful investors are using their headstart to build successful private investment groups on the back of the knowledge they’ve gained from their fathers.

Pablo Capital, a family investment group set up by Mark Anderson and his well-known investor father, Bruce Anderson, has this week funded Bioinformatics, a market research firm for the life science industries. Pablo invested alongside two institutional investors in the Virginia-based business. Last year, Pablo, which likes healthcare groups, invested in a laboratory service group called LabConnect.

Bruce Anderson is one of the three co-founders of Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a hugely successful New York City private equity group. Set up in 1979, WCAS has funded numerous tech and healthcare businesses and now employs more than 80 people with $22 billion in capital.

Also in the same father/son vein is Daniel Recanati, whose investment group Rhodium is growing into a significant force in the venture world in Israel, the UK, and the US. The Tel Aviv-based Rhodium has invested in more than 20 startups since it was set up in 2009. And just this week it announced another round of funding for a UK fintech startup called Sharegain.

Like Mark Anderson, Recanati has an illustrious investor father. In his case, it’s Leon Recanati, a very well-known Israeli investor, who runs an investment group called Glenrock, which, like WCAS, invests in healthcare and technology. The Recanati family made their money through the Israel Discount Bank, which is one of the country’s biggest banks. Leo’s grandfather set up the bank way back in 1935 before Israel was founded when it was then known as Palestine Discount Bank.