Owners and operators, since 1953.

BAK Development is the Emery family office, named for the initials of the three children it was formed to serve. The record began in 1953, when Willard A. Emery founded Southwest United Industries in Tulsa and built it with his son, Willard S. Emery, into a metal finishing company serving the aerospace industry. The third generation, Bill and Jim Emery, kept building: meeting ever-rising environmental and quality standards, and expanding across the US, Canada, and Mexico by acquisition and greenfield construction, before selling to Precision Castparts, a Berkshire Hathaway company, in 2012, its sixtieth year of family ownership. Bill remains active in managing our businesses with the fourth generation today. The fourth generation now runs the family's businesses the same way: buying, growing, and operating manufacturers; early-stage investing, developing real estate; backing founders we can be useful to.

We are not a fund. We have no LPs, no deployment clock, and no committee. When we buy a business, we run it. When we develop a property, we own it. When we back a founder, we stay.