Our Expert Team

Turner C. Smith is a Co-Founder & Managing Partner of IFG Asset Management, LLC and serves on the Investment Committee. Turner has primary responsibilities in transaction analysis, structuring and portfolio management, and serves on the Investment Committee of the Firm. Recently, Turner led IFG’s February 2021 private equity investment into Viridis Chemical, a renewable specialty chemicals company headquartered in Houston, TX, where he also serves on the Board of Directors. In Q4 2019, he led IFG’s private equity investment into CleanFiber LLC, an ESG-centric company that uses a proprietary process to convert waste corrugated material into clean cellulosic building insulation material. Concurrent with that transaction, Turner joined the CleanFiber Board of Directors where he serves as Chair of the Audit Committee. Turner also helped advise Columbia Pulp in 2017 on a large financing of a new-build specialty pulp plant in Eastern Washington State that converts waste wheat straw (post-harvest) into clean, unbleached pulp for packaging applications. Turner also was a Founding Investor in Groom Energy Solutions (now Dalkia, a subsidiary of EDF Group), a leading company focused on large-scale energy efficiency projects. Groom Energy Solutions was sold to a unit of EDF Group in late 2016.

Over the past fifteen years, Turner has been conducting significant due diligence and relationship development in the Real Assets private equity space. Prior to founding IFG, Turner was a Managing Director at Landmark Advisors, LLC, a New York-based alternative investments firm, where he directed the private equity efforts in Real Assets. He was co-founder & Managing Principal in 2005 of Tuckerbrook Alternative Investments, an alternative asset management firm where he oversaw the launch and was a Portfolio Manager of both the Real Assets and Global Distressed multi-manager private equity programs, where he directed allocations to over 40 private equity and hedge fund managers globally, as well as direct co-investments, overseeing private commitments of approximately $200 million on behalf of endowments & foundations, family offices, and other institutional investors.

Turner has over 40 years of Wall Street investment banking, private equity and alternative investment experience. As a former investment banker servicing the private equity and venture capital sectors, he has significant industry knowledge and relationships, as well as experience in principal and co-investing transactions. He was a Managing Director and Co-Head of PaineWebber’s Consumer Investment Banking Group, with additional responsibility for the e-commerce sector of the Technology Investment Banking Group. His experience included directing the co-investment of the firm’s capital into high growth technology companies. Prior to PaineWebber, Turner was a New York City-based Managing Director in the Investment Banking Group of Jefferies & Company. He also served as a Managing Director for many years at Smith Barney in New York, where he founded and was Co-Head of the firm’s Consumer Investment Banking Group. Additional experience at Smith Barney included the broad industrial sector, including packaging and paper & forest products.

Turner is a member of the Board of Directors of Viridis Chemical LLC and CleanFiber LLC. Turner previously served on the Board of Directors and was Investment Committee Chair for Council on Accreditation, a global multi-million dollar not-for-profit providing accreditation services primarily for child welfare organizations. Turner was also an adviser to, investor in and Outside Director for Ibex Outdoor Apparel, a pioneering company using next generation merino wool in the production of outdoor apparel.