Lazard taps PJT for New York-based managing director hire

Lazard has hired a managing director from PJT Park Hill‘s secondaries advisory group, Secondaries Investor has learned.

New York-based Amanda Ugarte submitted her resignation in the past two weeks, according to three sources familiar with the matter. She is set to join Lazard’s private capital advisory unit where she will focus on secondaries, the sources said.

Ugarte joined PJT in 2015 and has been focusing on GP-led transactions including single-asset deals, continuation funds, tender offerings and strip sales, according to the investment bank’s website. Prior to that she was a director on the firm’s healthcare advisory team and has also spent a decade at Morgan Stanley in its investment banking division working in its healthcare, technology and management groups.

Lazard’s secondaries unit is led by global head Holcombe Green, with Nick Miles in Singapore as head of European and Asia-Pacific private equity. It is advising on deals including the single-asset secondaries process on DomusVi, one of Europe’s largest care-home groups; Astorg‘s single-asset secondaries deal IQ-EQ; and Madison Dearborn Partners‘ process involving insurance broker/consultancy NFP Corp, as Secondaries Investor and sister title Buyouts have reported.

The bank advised on at least $10 billion of secondaries deals across more than 20 transactions in 2019, according to the Secondaries Investor Advisory Survey 2020.

Departures from PJT over the past year include Andrei Brougham and Alvaro Rosado to Rothschild & Co and Matthew Wesley and director Joseph Slevin to Guggenheim Partners.

Last week Secondaries Investor reported that PJT had tapped executives Imran Hameed and Adam Kashani from Credit Suisse and Aviditi Advisors, respectively, to join its secondaries advisory unit.

Spokespeople for PJT and Lazard did not return requests for comment.