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Guggenheim makes raft of secondaries hires

Guggenheim has made four hires, including two managing directors, in its rebooted secondary advisory team, Secondaries Investor has learned.

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Guggenheim Securities is continuing to rebuild its secondaries advisory team with a number of experienced hires.

The investment bank has hired Tim Light and Lisa Chiu as managing directors, according to three sources familiar with the matter. This follows the appointment in March of Citi’s Orcun Unlu as senior managing director and head of private capital advisory. He starts next week.

Light joins from boutique adviser Sixpoint Partners, where he was a director, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that he spent more than eight and a half years with the secondary advisory team at Greenhill, ending up as principal.

Chiu joins from Citi, where she spent more than three and a half years working under Unlu. She began her career in secondaries with UBS’s private capital advisory group, according to her LinkedIn page.

Vice-president Salman Rangrez and senior associate Marcel Grangien have also joined from Citi, Secondaries Investor understands. All are based in New York.

Guggenheim’s secondaries team will focus mainly on GP-led deals for midsized and large sponsors, sourced via the bank’s pool of M&A clients, Secondaries Investor understands.   It will also do opportunistic LP deals and work with Guggenheim’s structured products team on using securitisation as an alternative to selling portfolios of LP stakes.

The investment bank initially entered the secondaries advisory space in 2020 by hiring PJT Partners executives Matthew Wesley and Joseph Slevin, Secondaries Investor reported. They were joined later in the year by Richard Saltzman of Houlihan Lokey and Benjamin Carper from Lazard.

In May, the team moved to Jefferies, with Wesley becoming global co-head of private capital advisory alongside Brenlen Jinkens and Scott Beckelman.

Guggenheim is one of several groups to enter or re-enter the secondaries advisory space over the past 18 months, with others including William Blair, Baird, Rothschild & Co and Morgan Stanley, Secondaries Investor reported.

Guggenheim declined to comment.