MONITOR EXCLUSIVE: PROFILE OF SUCCESS
New Appointment at CapitalSource
Corporate Asset Finance Ushers in the
Next Generation of Industry Leadership
BY STUART P. PAPAVASSILIOU AND AMANDA L. GUTSHALL
When the industry learned of Laird Boulden’s promotion to president of CapitalSource at the end of
October, the logical question arose: who will succeed him to lead the company’s equipment finance
operations? According to Boulden, the appointment of Maureen Carr to his former position goes way
beyond the naming of a suitable replacement…
MAUREEN CARR
Managing Director, Corporate Asset
Finance Group, CapitalSource
In late October, monitordaily readers learned that Laird Boulden, the head of CapitalSource’s Corporate Finance Group, assumed the role of
president for the Maryland-based specialty finance
company turned bank. Some ten days later, the
industry learned of Boulden’s choice to lead the
company’s equipment finance operations. In Maureen
Carr, his protégé for more than a decade, Boulden sees
not only a skilled executive and trusted colleague, but
an example of the next generation of industry leadership as well.
Carr, who joined the workforce as a CPA, first
met Boulden at Heller Financial in 1997, where
she started out as a financial analyst but eventually
joined the equipment finance group in mid-2001. “I
worked for Laird at that point as a credit analyst,”
Carr recalls. “That was a short stint because after a
couple of months in equipment finance, GE bought
Heller.” But it was then that Carr got a taste of the
“From an industry perspective, CapitalSource really fills a void. We have a commercial finance mentality with the stability of bank
funding. And when we joined the firm in early 2010, there were
few players in the market. This enabled us to put our knowledge
to good use by working on more structured deals, without multiple
players nipping at our heels.”
— Maureen Carr, Managing Director, Corporate Asset Finance Group, CapitalSource
equipment finance industry and the differences
between the front and back offices. She says, “After
a number of years in finance roles, I felt that I needed
a change. Once GE bought Heller at the end of 2001,
I had to decide whether to go back into finance or
continue on the new path that I had begun. It was at
that time that Laird called me and asked me to join
him at RBS Asset Finance.”
That was in June 2002 and Carr has never looked
back on her decision to further her career. Carr joined
RBS as a credit analyst and by the time she left in
2008, she was leading the capital markets group.
Her association with Boulden continued when she
joined Tygris Commercial Finance as head of the
capital markets group. “My time at Tygris was inter-
esting for a couple of reasons. I was able to leverage
my background in finance and work closely with the
CFO at Tygris. I had the opportunity to go backwards,
so to speak, and ask myself, ‘Did I make the right
decision?’ This experience reinforced my decision to
continue with the path I was on.”
The fourth quarter of 2009 proved to be pivotal
for Carr. First, Tygris announced it was to be acquired
by EverBank, a Florida thrift seeking to expand its
product offering into the world of commercial finance.
Then in the final days of 2009, CapitalSource issued
a release announcing it had hired Boulden to lead
its new equipment finance unit. Under a new shingle
and once again, Boulden turned to Carr to head up
the new unit’s capital markets efforts. Carr explains,
“I joined CapitalSource in February 2010 and my
focus has been on handling all aspects of indirect
originations.”
