Jefferies finalises secondaries advisory line-up

Fifteen investment professionals have joined investment bank Jefferies from Greenhill, following a team of managing directors who moved across last year to start a secondaries advisory business.

Senior vice-presidents Wes Bender and Jason Morris, and vice-presidents Tom Ault, Brian Cotter and Apoorva Wanchoo are now at Jefferies, according to marketing documents seen by Secondaries Investor. Cotter and Wanchoo are based in San Francisco and New York, with the rest working out of Dallas.

Three associates and seven analysts have also made the move across.

Last year, Secondaries Investor reported that Greenhill MDs Brenlen Jinkens, Todd Miller, Scott Beckelman, Andy Nick and Chris Bonfield were moving to Jefferies to start a secondaries advisory unit.

Frustration around Greenhill’s declining share price and the desire to take a larger share of the market for GP-led deals were among the reasons for the departures, Secondaries Investor reported.

“Today, with how this market has grown, the increasing array of client types and transaction types, I view [secondaries] as the ultimate platform business,” Beckelman told Secondaries Investor in January. “What really attracted us to Jefferies and Jefferies to us was the fact that they built their investment banking business around serving sponsors.”

In January, Greenhill appointed London-based managing directors Bernhard Engelien and Briac Houtteville as co-heads of Europe while Hong Kong-based principal Lloyd Bradbury was promoted to Asia-Pacific head. The London and Hong Kong teams remain unaffected by mid-level and junior moves in the US, Engelien said.

Guggenheim Partners, Aviditi Advisors, Goldman Sachs and Rothschild & Co are among those to have planted a flag in the advisory market over the past 12 months, Secondaries Investor has reported.

Jefferies did not respond to a request for comment.