ABOUT
Swiss American Partners LLC (“SAP”) represents the joining of two successful family office investment firms which have worked and co-invested together in various successful entrepreneurial enterprises.
SAP’s capital arrives directly from these seasoned partners who collaborate to positively consult, invest and help grow selected organizations so as to impact attractive yields, strategic expansion and, when applicable, an exit plan.
Joe D. Tippens
Co-Founder and Managing Director
Michael Tockweiler
Co-Founder and Managing Director
Joe Tippens has been on all sides of private equity backed concerns including Founder, CEO, Senior Partner Venture Capital, Private Equity Fund Founder and Managing Partner, Investor and Board Member. His diverse industry experience includes: medical devices, medical diagnostics, biotechnology/drug development, industrial technology, transportation, software, AI data management, financial technology, commodity finance, sports marketing and infrastructure, real estate development, oilfield services and telecommunications.
In 2020, Mr. Tippens founded JTipHoldings, his family office investment enterprise. JTipHoldings is a 50% Partner of Swiss American Partners, a specialty private equity fund based in Zug CH and Oklahoma City OK.
For the previous 18 years, Joe had been the Founder and CEO of Strategic Capital Group and SCG Advisors (Vero Beach, FL, Toronto and Oklahoma City, OK), a private equity investment management firm. Among his accomplishments, he successfully raised and managed a $430M private equity firm and invested in and advised SSN Group AG, a vertically integrated real estate development and investment company. Concurrently with those activities from 2015 to 2021, Tippens represented middle market enterprises in M&A sell-side mandates totaling over $500 million in transaction value.
Previously, serving as CEO and Chairman of the Board at Commodity Capital Group (New York, NY), Mr. Tippens was recruited to build the technology and team and prepare the company for an exit. Utilizing innovative securitization vehicles, he ran all aspects of this organization, which focused on providing working capital to global commodity producers, traders and merchants. He led the company to become the first organization to achieve an investment grade rating on physical commodity assets, (grains, metals, and energy commodities) without the benefit of the owner’s balance sheet or credit capacity. The Company was successful in achieving $300 million in commodity securitizations before being sold to a division of Fletcher Challenge, a New Zealand-based conglomerate.
Previous to CCG, Mr. Tippens was the Co-founder and President of StadiaNet Sports, Inc. (Tulsa, OK), which was sold to Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers) in 1999, 33 months after its 1996 start-up.
From 1987 to 1995, he was a VP of Capital Markets at Merrill Lynch and Partner at Merrill Lynch Venture Capital (New York, NY); Previously, he was COO at Western Venture Capital Corporation (a bank affiliated SBIC); and Manager (audit division) at Arthur Andersen & Co., LP (Tulsa, OK). He received a BS in Agriculture Economics and Accounting, with honors, from Oklahoma State University in 1979 and is a CPA since 1980.
Mr. Tippens currently serves on the following Boards: Managing Director Swiss American Partners, LLC, Chairman of the Board of NexMuv LLC, Oklahoma State University Research Foundation; and Cowboy Technologies, LLC (OSU’s technology transfer seed fund). His prior notable Board Memberships include: Chairman of the Board, Commodity Capital Group, Inc. (sold to Fletcher Challenge); Chairman of the Board, ZymeTx, Inc.; Board Member, StadiaNet Sports, Inc. (sold to Paul Allen); Board Member, Data Critical Corp. (IPO, sold to GE Medical); Board Member and Urocor, Inc. (IPO)
Michael Tockweiler, at the age of 28 in 2003, founded Sport StadiaNet AG in Switzerland/Germany, partly backed by original seed capital provided by his partner Joe Tippens (the startup name came from Mr. Tippens' successful exit to Paul Allen of Stadianet Sports in the US). At inception, the Sport StadiaNet business model was to provide Sale/Leaseback (PPP) financing to German villages for sports infrastructure.
Virtually all of Germany’s sports infrastructure (Soccer, Basketball, Track, Swimming etc) had been originally constructed immediately following WWII. The original concept was to leverage Germany’s AAA rating by Moody’s and S&P and pick up a financing arbitrage through construction of sorely needed sports facilities.
After several years of success, the German government changed the rules on sports infrastructure finance and Mr. Tockweiler decided to turn the firm 180 degrees into a vertically integrated real estate development enterprise. Thus was born SSN Group AG in Zug, CH. From 2005 through 2019, Mr. Tockweiler led all aspects of both organic and acquisition growth throughout the vertical real estate development value chain, including engineering, architecture, construction management, environmental, regulatory, capital equity markets, debt financing and green certification. The firm specialized in multiple-level mixed retail, office and residential towers in Germany's 9 largest cities.
In 2019, after having accumulated a 100%-owned development backlog/pipeline of 4.5 billion Euros, Mr. Tockweiler sold the company to Consus Real Estate AG, creating Germany’s largest development firm with a combined 10.5 billion Euro gross development value backlog/pipeline, literally dominating the German real estate development landscape. Consus was further sold to a major European institutional investor and Michael exited the management team.
After the sale of SSN and Consus, Mr. Tockweiler founded MAVA AG, Zug CH. In addition to MAVA being a 50% partner in Swiss American Partners, continuing Michael and Joe’s partnership and friendship of 17 years, Mava continues to invest in German and Swiss real estate development transactions as well as other unique private equity opportunities.