Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the biggest investor in private equity according to the GI 100, has lost a senior member of its European secondaries team, Secondaries Investor has learned.
Nik Morandi, a senior principal, is leaving the C$434.4 billion ($329.3 billion; €278 billion) pension giant, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
A spokesman for CPPIB declined to comment. Morandi could not be reached for comment.
Morandi joined the pension in 2016 from Pantheon where he was a partner and has been leading its European secondaries business with senior principal Louis Choy based in London.
It is unclear where Morandi is headed next.
The Toronto-headquartered pension, the most well-known non-traditional investor in the secondaries market in recent years, became a net seller during the last fiscal year after two years of heavy secondaries investment, its latest annual report shows. It made C$700 million of secondaries investments across six deals in the 12 months to 31 March.
This compares with C$5.5 billion during the last fiscal year, which was a 31 percent jump on the C$4.2 billion it invested the year before.
The pension giant cited “two very active deployment years and a cautious market outlook” as the reasons for moderating its investment pace.
CPPIB’s former head of secondaries Michael Woolhouse left the pension in July to set up a secondaries investment business at private equity giant TPG in August.
CPPIB topped sister publication Private Equity International‘s GI 100 ranking of the biggest investors in the private equity, with $80.76 billion, or 24.9 percent of its total portfolio exposed to the asset class.
– Read our 2019 interview with CPPIB’s secondaries team here.