HarbourVest promotes three principals to managing director

Boston-based fund of funds, secondary and direct investment private equity firm HarbourVest has promoted Brett Gordon, Alex Rogers and John Toomey to managing directors. Together, the firm now has a total of 20 managing directors worldwide.

The promotion of Gordon and Toomey will bring HarbourVest’s total number of managing directors in its secondary investment team to five. Both will be based in Boston.

Gordon, who joined the firm in 1998, concentrates on fundraising and client service activities. He currently serves on the advisory boards of several of the firm’s partnerships with other private equity firms, including American Capital Equity Management and Macquarie Advanced Investment Partners.

Until recently, Toomey served as the interim chief financial officer of HarbourVest’s Euronext-listed vehicle, HarbourVest Global Private Equity, which he helped take public in December 2007. He was replaced in that capacity by Steve Belgrad, a former vice president at Affiliated Managers Group, and headed over to HarbourVest’s secondaries team. He joined the firm in 1997.

Rogers will be the fourth managing director in the firm’s direct investment team, where he will focus on growth equity, buyout and mezzanine transactions in Europe and other non-US regions. He will be based in HarbourVest’s London subsidiary and has been instrumental in growing the direct investment team in London, which recently added a new associate, Rodrigo Patiño, to its team. Patiño was formerly an analyst in Goldman Sachs’ Private Equity Group.

Besides London and Boston, the firm also has a growing Hong Kong office, which currently has two managing directors and a total of eight investment professionals. The office was founded in 1997.