Vector nabs COO from Thomas Weisel

The Bay Area private equity firm has hired David Baylor to helm operations as the company grows.

Vector Capital has hired former Thomas Weisel Partners chief financial officer and chief operating officer David Baylor as its new COO.

Baylor will be responsible for all of San Francisco-based Vector’s internal operations, management and infrastructure.

“An early participant in technology private equity, Vector continues to gain momentum and I look forward to applying my skills and operational expertise to be an integral part of its growth and expansion,” said Baylor in a statement.

Baylor held a variety of senior positions over the course of 10 years at San Francisco investment bank and asset manager Thomas Weisel including COO, CFO, chief administrative officer and general counsel. Private equity group Tailwind Capital completed its spin-out from Thomas Weisel in 2006.

Prior to Thomas Weisel, Baylor was an accountant at Deloitte & Touche; an attorney at Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin; and a managing director at San Francisco investment bank Montgomery Securities.

“As we look to our second decade of growth, we plan to increase significantly our investment in infrastructure and operations,” said Vector managing partner Alex Slusky. “David is a natural choice to lead that effort at Vector.”

In August 2007, Vector closed its fourth fund on $1.2 billion (€780 million), more than three times the size of its previous fund.

Vector specialises in spinouts, buyouts and recapitalisations and has approximately $2 billion in capital under management.

Earlier this week, the firm spun out software vendor Precise Software Solutions from software giant Symantec. Other notable investments include LANDesk Software, printing company Printronix and data compression company WinZip.