aPriori Capital Partners is a private equity investment firm focused on leveraged buyout transactions.

In 1992, the firm raised its first institutional private equity fund (DLJ Merchant Banking Partners, LP) with $1 billion in investor commitments.

After the acquisition of DLJ, the group, which was led by Thompson Dean and Larry Schloss faced significant turnover.

[2] The following year, in 2005, a team of professionals, led by Thompson Dean and Steven Webster, completed a spinout of DLJMB to form a new private equity firm, Avista Capital Partners, which raised its own $2 billion fund in 2007.

In 2008, Nicole Arnaboldi was named head of the firm after Steven C. Rattner resigned in the middle of fundraising for its fifth fund.