Last September, Olympus sold pet-products provider Petmate for nearly $700 million. Of that total, it distributed about $400 million to investors.

Producing 10-figure dividends

Amid the recent acquisitions, Olympus officials said many of the companies in Olympus’ portfolio have been performing strongly in the past year.

Among the top performers are Soliant, a provider of health care and education staffing services; Tank Holding, a manufacturer of polyethylene tanks and containers; and Vaco, a provider of business consulting and talent services.

Based on those three firms’ rising earnings, Olympus officials said their firm has distributed about $1.1 billion in dividends to investors in the past few months.

“When we buy companies, we try to buy ones that are able to do reasonably well, even in adverse conditions such as COVID,” Morris said. “That happened here, so we were delighted to distribute $1.5 billion worth of profits (dividends, combined with proceeds from the Petmate sale), on the heels of a huge economic softening caused by COVID.”

Olympus manages funds totaling more than $8.5 billion, mainly on behalf of corporate pension funds, endowment funds and state-sponsored retirement programs.

Several investors contacted by Hearst Connecticut Media Group declined to disclose how much they received from Olympus’ recent dividend distribution, but said they were satisfied with their share of the proceeds and pleased with Olympus’ performance.

“They have a very stable team, and their performance is as good as we would have expected,” said John Kyles, a managing director at Darien-based Portfolio Advisors, a middle-market private asset management specialist with about $38 billion in assets under management.

Other investors include London-based Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest charitable foundations and health research funders, supported by an endowment of around $50 billion. Wellcome has more than $100 million invested with Olympus, and it has been an investor with the firm for more than 20 years.

“Olympus is one of our oldest relationships, which testifies to their success,” said Robert Coke, Wellcome’s managing director of private equity. “They have often taken on complex and challenged businesses and turned them into growing and attractive businesses that have delivered good returns for shareholders and created jobs.”

Morris said he was confident about Olympus’ future, despite the volatility in the global economy. The firm’s offices are in the Metro Center complex, at 1 Station Place, across the street from the downtown Stamford Metro-North Railroad station. It has about two-dozen employees.

“The big things that we worry about and are having to act on regularly have to do with inflationary pressures. There are tremendous rises in commodity inputs in every business, such as resin for making plastics and the price of sugar in the baked-goods industry,” Morris said. “But overall, our portfolio is faring well — so we’re happy.”