RAF Industries is a diversified holding company in the business of acquiring, growing and operating middle-market companies. The company’s leader, Richard Horowitz, is an honors graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School, who joined RAF in 1991. He became president of the company in 2000 and took on the titles of chairman and CEO when the founder, Robert A. Fox, died in 2021.
The company’s areas of focus in its 13-company portfolio include consumer products, building products, healthcare services and geotechnical services. Since the company was founded in 1979, its gross and net internal rates of return exceed 30%.
“As a leader, modeling values and principles is far more important than espousing them,” Horowitz said. “At RAF, we believe in doing business the right way, in being a loyal and consistent partner, in achieving excellence in anything we opt to undertake, in being good listeners and in being confident in our judgments, decisions and actions while maintaining the humility to recognize that we are imperfect. Our commitment to these values only has meaning if and to the extent that they govern our work, our relationships and our personal lives.”
RAF expects to double the size of its earnings within five years by growing and developing its corporate staff, helping businesses grow at rates in excess of GNP, and to complete both add-on and platform acquisitions, the company said.
Historically, RAF has added value to its partner companies with centralized financing, health insurance, retirement plans, digital marketing and legal and tax support. “We intend to build opportunistically upon this base to provide our operating group a superior mix of costs and benefits in each of these areas, offering a value proposition not typically available to middle-market companies while freeing up invaluable management time to focus on the opportunities and challenges core to the successful growth of their companies,” the company said.
Horowitz is a board member and the treasurer of the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center, a member of the board of advisors of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences, a member of the board of directors of the National Constitution Center and the Chairman of the board of directors of the Wistar Institute.
Horowitz was the founding chair of the board of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania and served in that role for about 10 years. He also served as a member of the board of directors of the Albert Einstein Healthcare Network. He was an inaugural member of the national finance committee for then-Sen. Barack Obama, joining his team in January of 2007 shortly after his entrance into the presidential race. Horowitz also served on Obama’s National Finance Committee during his reelection campaign in 2012.