Greenhill: secondaries advisory drove ‘best first quarter’ earnings

Greenhill‘s secondaries advisory activity has pushed revenue to the strongest first quarter in the investment bank’s more than two decade history.

The firm’s Greenhill Cogent unit advised institutional investors on 40 closings of sales of limited partnership interests in the three months to 31 March, according to its latest earnings report. This is up from 32 closings in the fourth quarter of 2017 and 37 closings during the first quarter of that year.

“It was also another strong quarter for us in capital advisory, driven entirely by a high level of activity in secondary transactions,” chief executive Scott Bok said on an earnings call on Thursday. Revenue from capital advisory, including secondaries advisory, was $86.8 million, up 53 percent year-on-year from $56.7 million.

Transactions the firm is understood to have been working on in recent months include Government of Singapore Investment Corporation’s sale of around $2 billion of private markets funds stakes, as well as the restructuring of Spanish private equity firm ProA Capital’s 2009-vintage fund.

Greenhill led advisory activity last year, working on $11.9 billion across 62 transactions, according to Secondaries Investor‘s annual survey of intermediaries. The firm has been shortlisted alongside Campbell Lutyens and Evercore in the bid to win the mandate for Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association’s sale of more than $1 billion worth of private equity fund stakes, according to documents prepared for the US pension’s 9 May meeting.