Ex-Greenhill Asia head resurfaces at Lazard

Dominik Woessner will be based in Singapore, where he spent 10 years in Greenhill Cogent's Asian secondaries advisory team.

Dominik Woessner has joined Lazard’s Asian secondaries advisory team, seven months after Secondaries Investor reported his departure from the top regional role at Greenhill Cogent.

According to a statement from Lazard, Woessner will initially be based at its London office before moving to Singapore in the second half of 2018 to lead the origination and execution of secondaries transactions in Asia.

He joins an eight-strong Asian private capital advisory team, led by Nick Miles, and a secondaries operation headed up by New York-based global lead Holcombe Green, the statement notes.

Lazard was among the most active advisors in the Asian secondary markets last year, doing approximately $2 billion of deals in 2017, including advising Warburg Pincus on its $1.2 billion strip sale, the company noted in the statement.

Woessner left Greenhill Cogent after it announced it was closing its Singapore office and centralising its Asian operations in Hong Kong. He joined Cogent in 2007 and became head of the Asian secondaries team in 2013, according to the statement from Lazard.

Last year the Asian secondaries market saw $3 billion-$4 billion worth of transactions, according to an advisory source.

In November, it was revealed that Standard Chartered Private Equity has renewed plans to spin off from its parent company, a process that would see around $1 billion of private equity assets be put up for sale. The firm targets investments across China, Korea, South-East Asia, Africa, the Middle East and India.