LDR Partners Names Paul B. Murphy, Jr. as Partner
The Houston-based lower-middle-market industrials investor adds the banker who built Amegy Bank and Cadence Bancorporation to its investment committee.
HOUSTON, Aug. 25, 2026. LDR Partners LP, a veteran-founded private equity firm focused on control investments in lower middle market U.S. manufacturing and industrial businesses, announced that Paul B. Murphy, Jr. has joined the firm as a Partner in a newly created role. Murphy will serve on LDR's investment committee, advise the management committee on investment strategy, portfolio construction and governance, and support the firm's relationships with institutional investors.
Murphy began his commercial lending career at Allied Bank of Texas in 1981. In 1990, he co-founded Southwest Bank of Texas, later renamed Amegy Bank, serving as president and then chief executive as the institution grew from $75 million to $8 billion in assets through acquisitions and a 1997 IPO. Amegy Bank was sold to Zions Bancorporation for $1.7 billion in 2005. In 2010, Murphy led an investor group that raised $1 billion to form Cadence Bancorporation, taking the company public on the NYSE in 2017 and growing it to $18 billion in assets before its 2021 merger with BancorpSouth.
"We are thrilled to welcome Paul to our team, as he represents the very best of what business and financial leadership should be," said Richard Sexton, co-founder and partner at LDR Partners.
"Paul has played an integral role in helping us expand as a disciplined investment firm with the scaled capacity to back the kinds of businesses driving the American economy today," said Ryan Martin, managing partner and CEO of LDR Partners.
"American manufacturing is not an abstraction," Murphy said. "In each instance, it is a team of dedicated men and women in a building in a town that depends on them."
LDR Partners was founded in 2019 by Richard Sexton, JD Dolan and Lauren Gore, three former U.S. Army officers who met in the First Infantry Division and deployed together to Iraq. The firm closed its first institutional fund in early 2026 and has backed four platform investments since inception.