Goodwin adds sixth New York secondaries partner in a year

Robert Emerson joins from Kirkland & Ellis, where his clients included Whitehorse Liquidity Partners, Vista Equity Partners and Two Sigma.

Goodwin has added its sixth New York-based partner with secondaries experience in the past year, tapping Kirkland & Ellis’s Robert Emerson for the role within its private investment funds practice.

Emerson was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis for more than five years, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that, he practiced at both Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Ropes & Gray.

Emerson has led on a number of secondaries and strategic transactions on both the buy- and sell-side in connection with portfolio companies, co-investments and sponsor-level transactions, according to a statement from Goodwin about the hire. He also has experience advising on fundraises ranging from smaller emerging managers to well-established sponsors with offerings in excess of $15 billion.

His previous clients include Whitehorse Liquidity Partners, Vista Equity Partners and Two Sigma, a spokesperson told Secondaries Investor.

Emerson joins private equity partner James Mayne and private investment funds partners Esther Chiang, David Wagner, Runjhun Kudaisya and Adam Sussman on Goodwin’s secondaries team.

Goodwin’s approximately 200-lawyer private investment funds practice supports over 500 investment managers raising capital to invest in the private equity, real estate, technology, and life sciences sectors. In the past 18 months, the practice closed more than 60 funds totalling over $200 billion in raised capital, according to the statement.

Global secondaries fundraising dipped 30 percent year-on-year in the first half, with $31.2 billion raised, according to preliminary SI data.

A total of 32 funds closed in the first six months of 2022, with 69 percent of their capital earmarked for multiple regions – keeping roughly in line with previous years.