Credit Suisse poaches Lazard pair of secondaries advisers

Credit Suisse has hired two secondaries professionals at a time of fierce competition for advisory talent.

The global investment bank has appointed Adrian Siew and Gabrielle Kim to its New York-based private fund group, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Siew will start in the fourth quarter as a director, Kim has already started as a vice-president.

Both came from Lazard, where Siew was a vice-president and Kim was an associate, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

Siew joined Lazard in 2017 after consulting and M&A stints at A.T. Kearney, General Electric and Booz & Company. Kim joined Lazard in 2016 after starting as an analyst at UBS.

Last June, Credit Suisse‘s private fund group formed a unit that combines its advisory work on GP-led secondaries deals with its efforts sourcing capital for direct and co-investments. The capital solutions team is co-led by managing directors Paul Van Hook and Jeremy Duksin.

“We saw an overlap between secondary investment advisory and our direct placement business,” said Duksin at the time. “It became increasingly clear that merging these two activities…made more sense.”

Credit Suisse advised on $5.78 billion of secondaries deals in 2020, $3.35 billion of which were in single-asset transactions, according to Secondaries Investor‘s latest advisory survey. Eighty-three percent of its total deal volume was in private equity, with infrastructure, real estate and hedge funds also represented.

In February, Secondaries Investor reported that Credit Suisse was advising on a single-asset process involving UK ports operator Peel Ports Group, a DWS portfolio company. Other deals it is running include a single-asset process on Syntax Systems, a software company managed by Novacap, affiliate publication Buyouts reported in May.

Lazard has made a number of senior hires in 2021. In March, it hired PJT Partners managing director Amanda Ugarte to work on secondaries. In August, it appointed Patrick No as a managing director in Singapore to cover secondaries transactions and primary fundraising in the region, Secondaries Investor reported.

The rapid growth of the secondaries market has created a war for talent. Recruitment firm Jensen Partners tracked 1,749 job moves in the secondaries market during 2020, a 50 percent increase on the year before.

Credit Suisse and Lazard declined to comment.