Asante bulks up senior exec team

London-headquartered placement firm Asante Capital Group has hired Alexander Apponyi, former European head of private capital at Jefferies International, as managing director.

Apponyi will play a key role in supporting Asante’s growth and development across its New York, London and Hong Kong offices, according to a statement from the firm.

He will be based in London and work alongside managing partner Warren Hibbert and partner and chief financial officer Alka Patel.

He will play an active role in the firm’s growing secondaries advisory business, Secondaries Investor understands.

Apponyi co-founded secondary liquidity solutions provider Adhan Partners, according to a 2017 press release announcing his appointment to the role of European head of investor development at Z Capital, a New York-based mid-market alternative asset manager.

He became a partner of Adhan in 2012 and resigned in 2014, according to Companies House filings.

Apponyi has more than 20 years of experience advising and marketing private equity, private debt and real assets managers as well as private placements and private financings across Europe, Asia and the US. He has personally raised over $2.2 billion in capital and worked on more than $28 billion of fundraisings globally, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Prior to Z Capital, he served for more than three years as managing director and European head of the private capital group at investment bank Jefferies International. Earlier in his career, he held senior fundraising and advisory roles at Brookfield Asset Management, BerchWood Partners and UBS Investment Bank.

Secondaries Investor revealed in October that Asante was to enter the secondaries advisory business. The firm is positioning itself to advise on limited partnership stake sales and complex processes in the mid- and upper-market and is preparing to build a team of 10 professionals.