Our team

Fernando De Leon is the founder and CEO of Leon Capital Group, a holding company that operates assets in the financial services, healthcare, real estate, and technology industries. Leon is not a private equity fund; it operates as a family holding company overseeing $10 billion of its own private assets. Leon takes the lead conceiving, developing, owning, and operating businesses.

It started as a modest privately-owned real estate development company in Texas, Leon has since evolved into a diverse holding company, capable of operating successfully across multiple geographies and industries. Leon Capital, its affiliates, and externally managed companies encompass ~ 8,000 employees.

For the past 20 years, Mr. De Leon has structured investments with an asset value of $20B+. Leon Capital’s vehicles have invested in or developed approximately 20,000 rental housing units, 25M SF of industrial, 15M SF of retail, self-storage, and healthcare assets and 10,000 lots of land in residential subdivisions.

Leon’s current portfolio includes 10,000 apartments and 10 million square feet of commercial real estate in various markets across the southwestern and southeastern U.S. Additionally, Leon Capital, along with the Perot Companies, co-founded a European industrial holding company, which has developed over 40 M SF of industrial assets in the European Union.

Mr. De Leon is a co-founder of Crexi, one of the largest digital marketplaces connecting buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants in the commercial real estate sector. Crexi’s intelligence products support real estate professionals with real time transaction data.

Mr. De Leon and his team at Leon founded and currently operate Leon Financial, which holds banking interests and investments in the wealth management industry.

In the healthcare sector, Mr. De Leon and his team at Leon founded and currently operate Specialty Dental Brands, Frontline Dental Implant Specialists, Advanced Med Aesthetic Partners, Physician Directed Partners, Texas Heart Partners, Mattison Avenue, and Turnwell Mental Health.

Mr. De Leon began his career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York. He received a BA, cum laude, from Harvard College, where he was a Hoover Foundation Scholar and a National Coca Cola Scholar. The De Leon Family Foundation focuses its work on poverty in south Texas and northern Mexico and expanding access to healthcare. The De Leon Scholars program awards scholarships to twenty students annually across the state of Texas, who endeavor to improve their communities.

Hunter Dallas serves as the President of the Direct Investments arm. He is responsible for sourcing platform acquisitions, strategy execution, operational excellence, transaction structuring, and seeking new ways to achieve organic and inorganic growth.  While at LCG he has led the creation of multiple billion dollar+ businesses built around entrepreneurial partners.

Prior to joining LCG, Mr. Dallas was in the Investment Banking Division of Goldman Sachs in the financing group. He previously worked at Caterpillar Financial in their in-house management consulting program where he held various credit and operational roles that led departmental change.

Mr. Dallas received a B.A. in Economics from Vanderbilt University.

David Cocanougher serves as President of the Real Estate division at Leon Capital Group. David is responsible for directing development and construction of ground-up projects, portfolio-level oversight of operations and asset management of the existing properties and conducting special projects focusing on housing development. While at Leon Capital Group, David has successfully implemented an acquisition and development platform that has completed and sold over 6,500 units and has another 9,000 units under construction or in development.  David is also responsible for the growth and oversight of Leon Multifamily Construction, which performs as the general contractor for the development pipeline.  Under David’s leadership, Leon Capital Group has increased its multifamily market presence in all major Texas metros and has established a development pipeline that includes Phoenix, Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, and Florida.  David’s experience prior to joining the company includes on-campus student housing development, conventional and student value-add acquisitions and asset management as well as implementation of revenue management strategies for a broad range of national apartment operators and developers.  In all, David has been responsible for over $3 Billion in multifamily asset transactions and is currently overseeing the growth of the team, entry into new markets, and the development and construction of all new projects.  David received his undergraduate degree in Business from Texas A&M University, where he later obtained a Masters in Land Economics and Real Estate.