Mike Appelton
President & CEO
Mike is the founder, President and CEO of Peninsula Capital Corp. He is responsible for asset management of the existing portfolio, directing the acquisition strategy and coordinating all financing activities.
Prior to entering the entrepreneurial world, Mike worked for 15 years in commercial and corporate banking, the majority of which was with GE Capital where he held positions of increasing responsibility in risk management, portfolio management and sales. In his last role with GE Capital he was responsible for structuring and underwriting transactions totaling over $500 million in annual volume.
Mark Thiessen
Chief Operating Officer
Mark is responsible for all aspects of Peninsula’s day to day operations. Mark brings 28 years of experience owning and operating businesses in agriculture, e-commerce and energy, specifically companies that are operations and logistics intensive and operated in multiple locations.
Mark founded an e-commerce company in 1992 to sell his family’s farm fresh cut flowers directly to consumers throughout North America. At that time, many considered e-commerce and the Internet to be a fad but Mark persisted and grew the company to over $10 million in annual sales and successfully exited
via a sale to a third party in 2012.
Mark co-founded Pro Farm Energy, a developer of energy projects using a purpose grown energy crop
as its dedicated fuel source. Pro Farm Energy was successful in sourcing commitments of $85 million
in project financing.
Matthew Walker
Matthew is responsible for all aspects of financial and operational reporting, treasury, taxation and data analysis for Peninsula Capital Corp., as well as the establishment of financial policies and controls. Matthew is a CPA with over 15 years of experience in financial reporting, assurance, taxation and financial planning and analysis.
Matthew was previously Director, Finance of U.S. Residential real estate at Starlight Investments, a leading global real estate asset management firm with AUM of greater than $20 billion and owning over 68,000 residential units. Matthew oversaw the financial reporting, operational performance analysis, treasury, forecasting and financial controls of several TSXV publicly traded and institutional real estate funds. At Starlight, Matthew executed all finance aspects of several U.S. residential real estate fund IPO transactions worth close to $1 billion, including Starlight’s acquisition of Northview Apartment REIT, one of Canada’s largest real estate IPOs.
Prior to Starlight, Matthew held senior finance roles at both public and private companies across a diverse range of industries.
Peninsula Capital Corp. (PCC) has targeted the Buffalo, Rochester and Cleveland markets, which are in what is known as the former “Rustbelt”. We believe that there is a greater opportunity to acquire large scale portfolios below replacement cost at higher cap rates than traditional rental properties.
Out of the 150 largest metro markets in the United States, Buffalo ranked number 1 for rent growth as of August 2024 while Rochester was in the top 10 and Cleveland was in the top 25.