Altamar considers LatAm for secondaries

Madrid-based Altamar has a broad Spanish-speaking LP base and is currently analysing Latin America’s secondaries market, says executive directors Ignacio de la Mora and Miguel Echenique.

Why did you decide to target Spanish investors as your core LP base?

When launching Altamar, our objective was to provide institutional investors and family offices in Spain, an efficient access to the best international alternative investment managers, as these managers were not frequently known here in Spain and not easy to reach, and there were no suitable or adequate vehicles to invest. After 10 years, Altamar has turned out to have a high market-share with these investors. In 2009 we started opening our client database to other Spanish speaking investors, in Chile, Peru and Colombia, being those natural extensions of our current market.

What is Altamar’s approach to the secondaries market? What challenges does the firm face in secondaries investing?

We look at LP stakes, direct secondaries and restructurings. Being a value investor, the current environment for secondary investments becomes very challenging. Most auctioned transactions of interest in well-known funds are very competitive, we are increasingly focusing on off-market and particularly complex transactions like secondaries of co-investments, tail-end funds and even some GP restructuring situations.

Has Altamar closed any secondaries deals in South America?

We have analysed some and continue to do so but we have not closed any yet. We have invested in primary funds focused in Latin American companies, and are about to complete our second co-investment opportunity in the region.