Founder & CIO

John Guarino

Mr. Guarino is a veteran investment professional with over 24 years of experience. During his career, he has built and led experienced teams of professionals in all disciplines of trading, analytics, and structuring. In addition to being a successful Portfolio Manager, Mr. Guarino has raised over $850 million across all private funds and managed accounts he advises or manages, including $350 million in Accounts managed by Alternative Capital Investments. Mr. Guarino has an expertise in private deal transactions and led negotiations across a multitude of complex structures. Mr. Guarino started his career at Spear, Leeds and Kellogg, where he was a proprietary trader and market maker, and then continued his career as a trader at Goldman Sachs. Mr. Guarino has earned a solid reputation for his ability to creatively structure companies and investments that benefit all stakeholders through detailed research and due diligence for a deep understanding of all relevant factors, grasping and focusing on a potential Portfolio Investment’s key metrics and keenly assessing and managing attendant risks. Mr. Guarino founded Alternative Capital Investments in 2019. Mr. Guarino leads the firm’s strategic business initiatives and is responsible for its portfolio manager development and risk management philosophies, in addition to actively sourcing and executing investment transactions and leading the management team. The Principal has a Bachelor of Science degree from Villanova University and an MBA in Finance and Management from Fordham University.

FOUNDER & MANAGING PARTNER

James Berkeley

Mr. Berkeley has spent 30 years on Wall Street. He started his career as in mortgage and asset backed securities at Merrill Lynch. He spent 12 years in the Institutional Fixed Income Division at Merrill Lynch where he ran the Foreign Bank team and then built the Credit Derivative business. In 2002, Mr. Berkeley moved to run the Derivative and Structured Credit Business at Salomon Brothers/Citibank, where he became the top sales person globally for 3 years and a top 7 sales person globally for 10 years straight, generating over $1 billion in revenue. His coverage focused on banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, and insurance companies, with a focus on credit derivatives, CLOs, synthetic bespoke instruments, credit options, index and replication, consumer and structured finance. In 2019, Mr. Berkeley became a Managing Partner and an equity partner for Alternative Capital Investments, running its Investor Relations. Mr. Berkeley has been an active investor in the private markets for 20 years across multiple industries and asset classes. He received a BSE from the Wharton School of Business and holds an MBA in Finance and Real Estate from The Haas School of Business.