Keyhaven expands team mid-fundraise

The hires bring the total number of languages spoken by employees at the European mid-market secondaries firm to 21.

Europe-focused lower mid-market secondaries firm Keyhaven Capital Partners has expanded its team, including two investment professionals.

The London-headquartered firm has appointed Diana Marr as investment director and Vignesh Kumaravel as investment manager, according to a statement.

In her role, Marr will be responsible for overseeing the sourcing, analysis, monitoring and exiting of investments. With 20 years’ experience in private equity and finance, she was most recently managing director at BDO Corporate Finance, leading M&A transactions in technology, business services and retail industries.

Kumaravel will have similar responsibility overseeing the investment process. Most recently an investment associate at Kester Capital, he previously spent seven years at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the transaction services division.

The appointments bring the total number of languages spoken by its employees to 21. Women represent more than 50 percent of employees across all functional areas of the company, the statement noted.

These hires follow the promotion of Teddy Mouawad to partner in January and the hire of former JPMorgan and Gulf Capital executives in June 2020 for senior investment and IR roles, respectively.

Keyhaven has made 11 full or partial realisations year to date and completed six transactions in the lower mid-market across Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK, managing partner Sasha van de Water noted in the release.

The firm is in market with Keyhaven Secondaries Fund III targeting €500 million, according to Secondaries Investor data.

Keyhaven’s previous secondaries fund was the 2019-vintage Secondaries (Top Up) II, which raised more than €100 million, according to Secondaries Investor data. This followed the 2017-vintage Keyhaven Secondaries Fund II, which raised €250 million from investors including Swedish pension AP Fonden 4.

The firm has invested or advised on more than €2 billion and made more than 60 secondaries investments since it was founded in 2003, according to the statement.