Sam Panke
Sam Panke is a Managing Director on LongWater’s Capital Solutions team, bringing over 16 years of credit experience across private investments and debt capital markets.
Prior to joining LongWater, Sam served as a Managing Director on the Private Debt & Equity team at Reinsurance Group of America (RGA) and was a member of the Private Debt and Equity Investment Committee, where he focused on originating, evaluating, and structuring direct lending (unitranche, second lien, and mezzanine) and equity co-investment opportunities, as well as fund investments.
Earlier in his career, Sam was a Vice President in the Syndicated & Leveraged Finance group at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey in Atlanta, where he structured and executed a broad range of debt capital markets transactions — including leveraged buyouts and recapitalizations — across a diverse set of industries, overseeing more than $10 billion raised, underwritten, and structured across syndicated loans and high yield bond mandates.
Sam holds a B.A. in Economics from Vanderbilt University and also studied at the London School of Economics, where he focused on micro- and macroeconomics.