Christopher Witkowsky

The Washington, DC-based mega-firm has already made investments from Carlyle Mezzanine Partners II and bought some mezzanine investments on the secondaries market.

A management group from Lehman Brothers Venture Partners will spin-out to become Tenaya Capital, which will have $750m in capital and 45 portfolio companies. HarbourVest completed a synthetic secondary transaction as part of the spin-out.

The Southern California-based private equity advisor has hired James Gamett to head up secondary investments, which the company believes has become an attractive investment area.

The New York-based secondaries firm plans to capitalise on an expanding secondary market in 2009 and 2010. Fund VII will invest mostly in the US, but also in emerging markets.

Following HarbourVest’s decision to walk away from a signed secondary transaction last week, sellers of private equity fund interests are concerned that buy-side MAC clauses will complicate secondaries activity even further.