Lazard promotes secondaries head to top private capital role

Lazard has promoted its secondaries advisory head to lead its entire private capital advisory business.

New York-based Holcombe Green becomes global head of private capital advisory at the investment bank, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The promotion, which makes Green responsible for private equity, private debt and real estate fundraising, as well as secondaries advisory, was effective last Friday.

“I continue to be the head of the secondaries advisory business,” Green told sister publication Private Equity International. “The secondaries market has been growing very rapidly and we continue to do to large innovative transactions around the world. I still lead and execute on those transactions on behalf of our clients.”

William Riddle moves from global head of PCA to chairman of the unit.

Lazard’s PCA group members have been involved in 200 private capital raises involving more than $200 billion in total, according to the firm’s website. The unit has relationships with more than 1,500 investing institutions globally.

Green, a managing director, joined Lazard in 2004. He had previously spent a year at IBM and prior to that spent six years at Merrill Lynch.

Lazard has raised funds for managers including Gores Group, Equistone Partners Europe, Francisco Partners, Pomona Capital, Triton Partners and Värde Partners, according to PEI data.

Its secondaries unit is advising on deals including the single-asset restructuring involving Warburg Pincus’s 2012-vintage Fund XI, the GP-led process on Thomas H Lee Partners’ credit-boom-era sixth fund and a stapled deal involving four portfolio companies managed by Rockbridge Growth Equity.

“There’s a global phenomenon of private companies staying private longer,” Green told Secondaries Investor in February, speaking about the bank’s GP-led secondaries report for 2018. The firm estimates sponsor-led secondaries deal volumes hit $22 billion across 53 transactions last year, a 38 percent increase in value terms on the $16 billion recorded in 2017 and three times the figure recorded in 2016.