June 6, 2024, NEW YORK – Petra Funds Group (“Petra”), a leading independent private funds administrator, today announced the launch of Petra Outsourced Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”) Services, a new suite of CFO capabilities to provide private equity and private credit funds with expert leadership during critical periods of growth. As part of the announcement, Erin Rathke, the former CFO of leading private energy fund White Deer Energy, will join the firm as a Managing Director based in Houston, TX to further deepen its CFO capabilities.
Petra Outsourced CFO Services aims to provide private funds with an experienced CFO on a temporary or extended basis who can operate as an extension of the firm, delivering efficiencies for fund managers and enhancing their LP relationships while not compromising on experience or service. The Outsourced CFO Services capabilities include CFO and other operational fund and management company personnel as well as advisory services to support strong firm launches, financial and operational strategy, LP relationship support and governance, regulation and risk oversight. The service is complementary to Petra’s successful Emerging Managers offering, which enables new investment managers to quickly launch with institutional-grade operations support, allowing the manager to focus its attention on fundraising and its deal pipeline.
“As we have scaled our business, we have found many gaps in the middle- and back-office where firms need help, with finding qualified CFOs being one of the most acute issues currently,” said Peter Haskopoulos, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Petra. “Firms face many hurdles when it comes to finding strong CFO candidates and filling other financial roles and our goal is to make this easier by providing private funds of all shapes and sizes – from startups to established players – with access to experienced, well-respected veteran CFOs and other financial professionals.”
With more than 20 years of private markets experience and nearly a decade in the CFO role, Erin Rathke joins from White Deer Energy, one of the leading energy investment firms, where she spent eight years as the firm’s CFO. Prior to joining White Deer, Erin was a Tax Director in PwC’s Asset Management practice. She holds a B.B.A. in Accounting from the University of Texas at Arlington and is a licensed CPA in the state of Texas.
“Given the growing needs of private funds, we believe this new offering is well-positioned to deliver on our mission to take care of the middle- and back-office for managers so they can concentrate on the work essential to scaling their businesses,” said Stephen Coats, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Petra. “With deep experience in the CFO role as well as a career spent in tax and accounting, Erin is a great addition to our deep bench of former in-house CFOs and financial services experts and will play a critical role in helping us kick off this new offering. We look forward to continuing to expand our suite of middle- and back-office private fund solutions and integrating Erin into the Petra family.”
