Ex-Park Hill international head launches advisory firm – exclusive

The former international head of Park Hill‘s secondaries advisory group has launched a transatlantic advisory firm focusing on GP-led processes.

Pablo Calo has founded Fairview Capital Group, which will provide independent advice to general partners and their investors. The group has offices in London and New York and staff in Washington DC and Johannesburg.

The group has two professionals from ForeVest Capital Partners in its team. They are John Leone, who was a managing partner at the CEE-focused mid-market firm, and Christopher Lui, who will focus on project management.

Two staff from investor relations services firm Bercomm Group are also part of the group. Jordan Robinson has joined in an LP-facing role and Christine Gabbianelli focuses on project management.

In Johannesburg, Tony Couloubis joins from SPE Capital Partners and focuses on due diligence.

Fairview has two other staff in London and plans to hire staff in Asia, Calo said.

“The integrity of the processes and how they’re run is a big challenge,” Calo told Secondaries Investor. “There are potential conflicts of interest in these transactions. How these processes are run is a critical factor to ensure the further growth of these deals, which ultimately provide a benefit to the LPs. They have to be done with LPs in mind.”

The group will focus on GP-led restructurings and provide advice to address conflicts of interest in private equity, private debt and real estate secondaries deals.

Fairview plans to differentiate itself by focusing on each transaction and will not provide placement or investment banking services in order to remain as independent and as focused as possible, Calo said.

“The recurring counter-parties in these deals are the LPs. It’s important that we present to them the minimum amount of conflicts of interest that affect the advisor and also that affect the transaction,” he said.

London-based Calo spent six years at Park Hill, becoming head of secondaries advisory international in 2017. He joined the firm when it was part of Blackstone and led an aggregate of $12 billion-worth of deal volume across at least 40 transactions, including 15 GP-led solutions and one securitisation, according to a statement about Fairview’s launch seen by Secondaries Investor.

He left in the first half of this year, as Secondaries Investor reported.

Leone, who trained as an attorney and worked at Kirkland & Ellis for six years until 2004, led the restructuring of ForeVest’s New Europe Partners II fund last year from the GP’s side. ForeVest was formed in 2016 when four partners – including Leone – spun out of PineBridge Investments.

Fairview’s motto is to provide a fair process, fair value and a fair deal, Calo said.

“We believe that a fair process in these deals creates value for the parties, and that is the right way to create these transactions because they are naturally prone to have potential conflicts of interest,” he added. “Having the right process and the right outcome from a value perspective creates the right optionality for the parties.”