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Robert Karl Grunewald (born June 29th 1962) is an investment manager and entrepreneur. He is the managing member of Flat Rock Global, LLC, one of the founding executives of Business Development Corp of America and the Founder of American Capital Agency (ticker: AGNC).

He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the [|University of Notre Dame] in 1984 and an MBA from [|Georgia State University].

Early Life and Education

Grunewald was raised on Long Island in [|Smithtown, New York]. He was the second of four children born to Karl, who worked as a Nassau County police officer and Jo-An, who worked as a school teacher. He attended high school at St. Anthony’s in Smithtown where he ran track and cross country. Grunewald attended the [|University of Notre Dame], paying his way through college working as a school janitor and later auditing and videotaping classes for other students. After school he went to work in the credit analyst program at the Citizens and Southern National Bank in Atlanta, Georgia. He later earned an MBA at [|Georgia State University] while working.

Business Career

After completing the credit analyst program, Grunewald was a middle market lender in Atlanta, GA for The Citizens and Southern National Bank. He later worked in the special situations group for what became the C&S/Sovran Bank focusing on loan workouts for media companies. In 1996 he was recruited to create the financial services M&A practice for what became NationsBank in Charlotte, NC. In 1997, he left the bank to create the financial services investment banking practice for what today is [|Wells Fargo]. While at the predecessor to Wells Fargo Grunewald led the initial public offering for Ares Capital (ticker: ARCC) and worked on capital raising for numerous other direct lenders and business development companies (BDCs).

In 2006, Mr. Grunewald joined American Capital Strategies (‘‘ACAS’’), a publicly-traded BDC and global asset manager. As head of the Financial Services Investment Practice from 2006 through 2009, Mr. Grunewald and his team focused on investment activity in the specialty finance, insurance, and asset management sectors. While at ACAS he founded two highly successful financial services companies: Core Financial Holdings, a diversified commercial finance company and asset-based lender, and American Capital Agency Corporation (NASDAQ: ‘‘AGNC’’), a publicly traded mortgage REIT.

Business Development Corp. of America

Grunewald joined Business Development Corp. of America as Chief Investment Officer Business and was eventually promoted to President. During his tenure at BDCA, Mr. Grunewald grew the company from $2.5 million of assets under management to $2.7 billion. BDCA was the top performing non-traded BDC in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Mr. Grunewald hired the investment and origination teams, established the firm’s investment strategy, and chaired the investment committee. He also established the firms’ loan management systems as well as their policies and procedures. While at BDCA, Mr. Grunewald also founded Kahala Aviation, a mid-life aircraft leasing business and AR Capital BDC Income Fund, the first open-end mutual fund dedicated to investing in the BDC sector.

Flat Rock Global

Today Grunewald is the CEO and Founder of Flat Rock Global, LLC, an alternative asset manager focused on developing yield driven investment strategies in sectors deemphasized by banks. Flat Rock’s initial fund, Flat Rock Capital is a BDC investing in first lien, senior secured loans to middle market companies. It’s second fund is an interval fund called Flat Rock Opportunity Fund, focused on investing in the equity of collateralized loan obligations.