CPPIB taps GIC exec to lead New York secondaries team

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the world’s biggest investor in private equity according to the GI 100, has hired a seasoned professional from GIC as it expands its secondaries team.

Jeremy Weisberg is set to join the Canadian pension’s New York team, according to four sources familiar with the matter. He will join on 1 April and lead the New York secondaries effort, according to one of the sources.

A spokesman for CPPIB confirmed Weisberg’s appointment. A spokesman for GIC declined to comment.

Weisberg, who ranked sixth in Secondaries Investor‘s 2016 Young Guns of Secondaries list of the most impressive industry professionals under 36, joins a team led by managing director Dushy Sivanithy in London. Weisberg and Sivanithy are Pantheon alumni, having overlapped at the investment firm between 2011 and 2015, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

CPPIB named Sivanithy as secondaries head last September, as Secondaries Investor reported. London-based Delaney Brown is head of PE funds and secondaries.

Weisberg was promoted to senior vice-president at the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund last year and has worked on deals including the 2015 stapled transaction involving two Lee Equity Partners funds, as Secondaries Investor has reported.

Deals GIC’s secondaries team have backed recently include a yuan-to-dollar fund restructuring involving Shanghai’s Loyal Valley Capital; restructuring two vehicles managed by tech-focused investor Vector Capital; and the restructuring of Thomas H Lee Partners’ credit-boom-era sixth fund.

Weisberg’s appointment is one of at least four this year to CPPIB’s secondaries team. The pension is understood to have hired Kyle Hughes as a senior associate from Partners Group, as well as two analysts, all based in Toronto.

The hires come after three members of CPPIB’s senior secondaries team left last year.

The secondaries market is suffering from a limited pool of talent, particularly in the GP-led arena. Large buyside entrants, such as TPG and Brookfield, are making people think carefully about how they are compensated and question whether they might be better off elsewhere, affiliate title Private Equity International reported this month in its GP-led Secondaries Special Report. At a junior level, firms can bring people in from the M&A world and train them up, this is more difficult in mid-level positions where people are expected to hit the ground running.

CPPIB had $80.8 billion invested in private equity, according to PEI‘s GI 100 ranking last year of the biggest investors in the asset class.