Landis "Lanny" Martin: founder of Equity Firm started new career after running industrial, chemical and metal companies.

• Author: Caley, Nora

When J. Landis "Lanny" Martin said he wanted to retire in 2005, he didn't mean play golf or travel for fun. After working for years as chairman and GEO of several publicly held industrial, chemical and metals companies, Martin decided he wanted to start a new company while he still had time.

"I thought I had another 15- to 20-year career left, and I wanted to get started on it sooner rather than later," Martin says. He started a private equity fund, Platte River Ventures. "I was running businesses for 18 years, and I did mergers before, and I spent a lot of time buying and selling companies, It kind of in my skill set."

That skill set, he says, includes problem solving, something he developed in law school in the 1970s. "In law studies you really talk critically about the facts you receive," he says. "I think that as much as anything helped me in my career."

After Martin graduated from Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, he worked (or the national law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. He moved to Denver in 1981 to open the firm's Denver office. He specialized in litigation, corporate law and mergers and acquisitions, and thought he would work for a large law firm for the rest of his life.

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But 15 years into his law career, a company he represented offered him the job of CEO. The company was Titanium Metals Corp., or TIMET, which supplies titanium for aerospace and other industries. During the 16 years Martin was CEO, he was also CEO of NL Industries, a TIMET subsidiary that is a specially chemical producer.

He calls the six years since he started Platte River Ventures "interesting." Of the 14 companies Platte River Ventures has bought, seven are in aerospace, a strong sector despite the downturn. "Fortunately we picked industries that managed to do well through this time,"...