Collin Roche and the case for hiring the captain first

When GTCR agreed to buy control of Worldpay in July 2023, the transaction came with a returning chief executive. Charles Drucker had run the payments business before. He would run it again. For Collin Roche, GTCR’s co-CEO, that familiar face was a central part of a very large investment decision.

The agreement valued Worldpay at $18.5 billion, including contingent consideration. GTCR would take 55 percent; FIS would keep 45 percent. Those figures explain the ownership. Drucker’s return helps explain the plan. The firm was backing an executive with experience of the business it wanted to change.

Private equity has a vocabulary capable of making an ordinary decision sound as though it requires a ceremonial robe. GTCR calls its approach The Leaders Strategy™. Its premise is fairly direct: find experienced executives, work with them to identify opportunities, then supply capital and support to build companies. Roche has spent much of his working life inside that approach.

The familiar face in a very large deal

Roche’s Worldpay chapter is useful because it makes the management partnership tangible. A payments company needs technology, distribution, customer relationships and people who can make those pieces work together. A new owner can provide money. It still needs someone who understands which decisions to make with it.

GTCR’s acquisition announcement paired Drucker’s return with a commitment of up to $1.25 billion in additional equity for acquisitions. The executive appointment and the growth capital appeared together. This was a plan to give an established company another stretch of independent development, with a chief executive who already knew its business.

The scale attracted attention. The underlying method had a much longer history in Roche’s career. By the time Worldpay arrived, he had spent more than a quarter of a century at GTCR, apart from a period earning his MBA. He had worked with enough financial businesses to know that a company’s name reveals only a fraction of how it operates.

A long apprenticeship in the machinery of money

Roche studied political economy at Williams College. The college records him as a member of its class of 1993. He worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York and as an associate at EVEREN Securities in Chicago before joining GTCR in 1996.

He subsequently earned an MBA at Harvard Business School. His LinkedIn profile gives the years as 1998 to 2000 and records graduation with High Distinction. A historical corporate filing notes his return to GTCR in 2000. The career had acquired a second academic chapter without changing its institutional destination.

Over time, Roche led GTCR’s Financial Services & Technology group. His former board positions include VeriFone, Fundtech, Transaction Network Services, PrivateBancorp and numerous other companies. The list reaches across payments, banking and the systems that help financial activity happen. It is a career in the machinery of money, much of it operating out of the customer’s sight.

A 2010 PrivateBancorp filing described the experience he brought to its board: governance, operations, credit, risk management and capital markets. Roche had joined that board after a GTCR-linked equity investment in December 2007. The work involved the continuing responsibilities of ownership as well as the transaction that established it.

Today he shares GTCR’s chief executive role with Dean Mihas. His public record reflects both levels of the job: firm leadership and involvement with individual businesses. CAPTRUST describes his approach as analytical and grounded in facts, with an emphasis on investment discipline. Those are sober credentials, which is probably appropriate when other people have entrusted you with capital.

Different businesses, the same attention to the people

CAPTRUST supplies an example of a partnership that left an existing leader in place. In June 2020, GTCR made a 25 percent minority growth investment in the financial advisory firm. Co-founder Fielding Miller continued as chairman and chief executive and remained its largest shareholder.

CAPTRUST had already completed 40 transactions since 2006. It was seeking capital to support further national expansion. Roche’s comments at the time emphasized the opportunity in independent investment advice and the prospect of working with Miller and his team. An established acquisition program was getting another source of support.

Allspring involved a different kind of change. GTCR and Reverence Capital Partners acquired Wells Fargo Asset Management, and the business began operating independently under its new name in November 2021. Joseph Sullivan, previously chairman and chief executive of Legg Mason, became its executive chair and CEO.

Roche and Reverence’s Milton Berlinski jointly described plans to invest in the technology platform, distribution network and international footprint. Those ambitions give substance to the word independence. A separated company needs a direction for its own spending and a team that can carry it out. Roche also joined Allspring’s board.

Then came Foundation Source in September 2023. GTCR acquired the provider of administrative, compliance, advisory and technology services for private foundations, partnering with Joseph Mrak as its new CEO. Mrak’s experience included wealth technology roles at Refinitiv, Solovis and FolioDynamix.

The announced priorities included technology improvements, expanded products, acquisitions and closer relationships with wealth managers and other partners. Foundation administration may occupy a quieter corner of finance than payments, but it also depends on systems and service. Across these different businesses, Roche kept returning to the question of who would lead the next stage.

The sale with another chapter attached

The dates in the Worldpay story deserve care. The majority purchase was agreed in July 2023 and completed on January 31, 2024. In April 2025, GTCR and FIS agreed to sell Worldpay to Global Payments in a transaction valuing it at $24.25 billion. Completion followed in January 2026.

The transaction had three moving parts. Global Payments acquired Worldpay. FIS acquired Global Payments’ Issuer Solutions business. GTCR received cash and stock, with the latter leaving it with an ownership position of approximately 15 percent in Global Payments. Each party was changing its relationship to the payments industry.

For Roche, that continuing stake gave the sale a further chapter. GTCR would participate in the combined business after surrendering its controlling Worldpay position. The headline valuation describes the transaction’s scale; it does not measure Roche’s personal wealth or, by itself, the investment’s return.

GTCR described its ownership period as one of investment in technology, products, services and operations. In his public discussion of Worldpay afterward, Roche emphasized changes made inside the business. His argument was that improved performance could support the investment outcome, rather than leaving everything to the next movement in market prices.

The difficulty with waiting for perfect weather

Roche has been making a version of that argument for years. In a February 2022 interview, he described a more uncertain investment environment and said GTCR believed in accelerating when others pulled back. By 2025, his attention also included the problem of owners waiting indefinitely for ideal selling conditions.

His point was practical. A business that has improved during ownership offers an investor more room to make decisions. Waiting for buyers to pay higher prices can be tempting, but it leaves the outcome dependent on circumstances beyond the company. Operational and strategic work provides something management can actually influence.

“You don’t need to rely as much on market conditions for multiple expansion to drive returns.”

Collin Roche / June 2025

That position comes with a qualification. Roche also described caution when prices become excessive or borrowing becomes too easy. His public comments favor buying and selling without chasing the extremes. The preference is for an investment case grounded in the business, with market conditions treated as conditions to assess.

In May 2026, he said GTCR wanted to be “buyers when other people are running away.” The sentence sounds brisk. His accompanying discussion acknowledged the risks. Conviction, in this account, requires understanding what might go wrong alongside what management hopes to improve.

A wider set of tools, a familiar starting point

The firm Roche co-leads has expanded the capital available for those decisions. GTCR closed Fund XIV in May 2023 with $11.5 billion in aggregate commitments, above its initial $9.25 billion target. Approximately $500 million came from GTCR itself. Roche and Mihas jointly emphasized the ability to invest through uncertain conditions.

In July 2026, GTCR announced approximately $1.25 billion in commitments for its inaugural Capital Solutions Fund and affiliated vehicles. This fund focuses on structured minority equity and debt investments, primarily in middle-market businesses. It creates another way to finance growth and acquisitions without requiring majority ownership.

Roche’s connection to the initiative extends beyond a joint announcement. A GTCR organizational chart presented in a December 2024 public pension board packet named him as the executive sponsor of Capital Solutions. The later fund close brought that developing strategy into a more concrete form.

Outside investment work, Roche’s public commitments include Freedom House, whose board of trustees he joined in 2022, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Williams College has also listed him on its Non-Marketable Assets Advisory Committee. His biographies record support for the educational missions of Williams and Harvard Business School.

In 2022, he publicly shared his participation in Invest For Kids at Chicago’s Harris Theater, a conference raising money for organizations serving disadvantaged local youth. It is another setting in which investment knowledge becomes useful through institutions and other people.

That is the thread connecting the visible chapters of Roche’s career. The businesses change. Ownership can be a minority stake, a corporate separation or a controlling investment followed by a complicated sale. The recurring task is to understand the company, choose the people to work with and give their plan the means to proceed. The captain still matters after the ship leaves the dock.