Ares loses Landmark partner a month after acquisition close

The departure comes after the credit behemoth closed the acquisition of secondaries specialist Landmark Partners in June.

Ares Management, the latest private markets giant to enter the secondaries buyside, has lost a partner from its recently acquired firm.

John Stott, originally a partner from Landmark Partners, who focuses on private equity secondaries in its Secondary Solutions Group, will leave the firm, according to three sources familiar with the matter. It is understood that he recently tendered his resignation.

It is unclear where Stott is headed next.

New York-based Stott originally joined Landmark in 2013, according to his LinkedIn profile, and was promoted to partner in 2020. He focused on transaction origination, underwriting and negotiation of private equity investments there and prior to that was at Boenning & Scattergood, according to Ares’s website.

In 2018, Stott was included in Secondaries Investor‘s Young Guns of Secondaries – now Next Gen Leaders – ranking of the most impressive industry professionals below 36. He was noted for having executed approximately $1.6 billion worth of transactions as of mid-2018, as well as sourcing and co-leading $650 million in deals.

Ares completed its $1.08 billion acquisition of Landmark last month, having agreed to buy the private equity and real estate secondaries firm in March. Secondaries became the fifth strand of the credit giant’s business. As part of the deal, Landmark’s 16 partners were to participate in a management incentive plan under which they had to meet targets related to fundraising and revenue generation, as Secondaries Investor reported.

Stott’s departure comes five months after Ira Shaw, a partner in Landmark’s real estate team, left the firm. Secondaries Investor reported that Shaw, a 13-year veteran of Landmark, had joined Crow Holdings Capital, a Dallas-based investment management firm, as a managing director.

Francisco Borges and Timothy Haviland are co-heads of Ares’s secondaries business.

A spokesman for Ares did not return requests for comment.