Gary Bassett

Founder, Chairman and Managing Partner

Gary Bassett is Founder, Chairman and Managing Partner of HP Capital Partners, an institutional hedge fund based in Dallas. His path to that seat runs through J.P. Morgan, a bank he helped found in Texas, an enterprise software company he built and sold, and a return to investment banking at Bank of America before he started the fund.

The long view

Gary Bassett spent his early career at J.P. Morgan as Senior Vice President in investment banking, learning the discipline from the institutional side before deciding to build something of his own. That decision led him to Lamar National Bank, where he was a founding shareholder and served as President of the Lamar Bank Center, giving him a working understanding of community banking from the inside.

In 1985 he founded Microbank Software Inc., building enterprise software for banks and construction firms as CEO and Chairman until Citicorp acquired the company in 1994. He returned to investment banking as Managing Director at Bank of America, working between Dallas and New York, before stepping away for seven years to focus on global philanthropy and exploration in more than 60 countries.

Since 2012 he has led HP Capital Partners as Founder, Chairman and Managing Partner, applying four decades of banking, entrepreneurship and asset management experience to institutional hedge fund investing. He holds a BBA and an MBA in Finance from Southern Methodist University, where he is part of the Dallas Hall Society, and serves on the boards of the Global Community Development Initiative, the Bassett Education Foundation, the Red River Council, the Lamar Bank Center and Lamar National Bank.

As he puts it: "When it is your company, there is nowhere to send the recommendation. You have to make the decision and deal with what happens next."