Jefferies poaches Guggenheim advisory team

The secondaries advisory team at Guggenheim Securities is set to depart, less than a year after it was formed.

The team led by managing director Matthew Wesley is joining Jefferies, where it will focus on GP-led deals alongside the existing team, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Their starting date is not clear.

Secondaries Investor reported in July that Wesley and director Joseph Slevin were leaving PJT Park Hill to launch a secondaries advisory unit at Guggenheim.

They were joined in September by Houlihan Lokey secondaries advisory head Richard Saltzman and in December by vice-president Benjamin Carper from Lazard. The three will follow Wesley to Jefferies, Secondaries Investor understands.

Wesley, who will lead the unit’s GP-led advisory effort, will take the title of global co-head of private capital advisory alongside Brenlen Jinkens and Scott Beckelman, who moved to Jefferies from Greenhill in September to form a secondary advisory unit, Secondaries Investor understands.

They were joined the following month by managing directors Todd Miller, Andy Nick and Chris Bonfield and later by several other members of Greenhill’s US-based team, Secondaries Investor reported.

“What really attracted us to Jefferies, and Jefferies to us, was the fact that they built their investment banking business around serving sponsors. This move is being made purely to upgrade the platform and to enable us to do bigger and better things given the breadth of the organisation,” Beckelman said in January.

The past 18 months has seen several other entrants into the secondary advisory space, including Tradition, Rothschild & Co and Goldman Sachs.

Guggenheim did not respond to a request for comment. Jefferies declined to comment.