Looking back: Top five people moves of 2021 – updated

The battle for talent in the secondaries market raged on this year, with multiple notable departures across both the buyside and advisory side.

Here are the five most notable people moves this year.

5. Credit Suisse’s Sameer Shamsi joins Houlihan

In April, Secondaries Investor reported that Sameer Shamsi, a director within Credit Suisse‘s private fund group, was leaving the bank to join Houlihan Lokey as its head of secondaries. New York-based Shamsi, a market veteran who had worked at Evercore and UBS prior to Credit Suisse, later told Secondaries Investor that he expected the supply of concentrated continuation fund transactions to double in the coming year, and that to meet this demand for liquidity, at least half a dozen established asset managers will enter the market as buyers.

4. GIC’s Jeremy Weisberg joins CPP Investments

Swapping the tropics for colder climes, Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC vice-president Jeremy Weisberg jumped ship to Canada’s largest public pension in April. Weisberg, who ranked sixth in Secondaries Investor‘s 2016 Young Guns of Secondaries list of the most impressive industry professionals under 36, joined CPP Investments to lead its New York team. His appointment was one of at least four this year to CPPIB’s secondaries team.

3. Pantheon’s Matt Jones joins TPG

TPG‘s hiring spree continued this year with the world’s fourth-biggest private equity firm tapping Pantheon‘s Matt Jones to co-lead its global secondaries unit. London-based Jones was set to join the firm during the year as co-managing partner, Secondaries Investor reported in April, and would join Michael Woolhouse, who joined TPG in 2020, to launch its secondaries effort.

2. Five Coller senior execs depart

In March, Secondaries Investor reported that five partners from Coller Capital were to step down. Axel Hansing, Peter Hutton, Stephen Marquardt, Frank Morgan and Dave Platter would leave the firm during the course of the year and remain as senior advisers to the firm. As part of the move, Coller promoted six professionals to the partnership across its investment, investor relations and talent/HR teams: Adam Black, Hani El Khoury, Yonatan Puterman, Steven Stolk, Gerald Carton and Rani Swords.

1. Ardian’s Vincent Gombault departs

Technically a departure from the end of 2020, the firm’s fund of funds and private debt boss stepped down seven months after raising $19 billion for the secondaries market’s largest secondaries programme to date. Secondaries Investor reported in January that Gombault was to join Ardian‘s supervisory committee, with founder and president Dominique Senequier stepping in to chair a management committee comprising seven senior executives that took over responsibility for the fund of funds activity.

“Intense”, “tense”, “a genius”, “extraordinary” and “very direct” are just some of the ways market sources described him to Secondaries Investor over the years. Gombault’s participation in the secondaries market could be around the corner, with the investment veteran predicting a $2 trillion market by 2030.

Other notable moves in the secondaries market in 2021 include:

• Rodney Reid, a senior managing director at Evercore, joined Moelis in April.
• Paul Van Hook, co-head of Credit Suisse’s capital solutions group, leaving the bank, as affiliate title Buyouts reported.
• CPP Investments’ Louis Choy and Marianne Parker departing to join AlpInvest Partners.
• Briac Houtteville stepping down as co-head of European capital advisory at Greenhill to join Portfolio Advisors.
• PJT Park Hill hiring Jolie Chow, a decade-long veteran from Morgan Stanley, to lead its Asia-Pacific operations; and hiring Chris Areson from Apollo Global Management– he had previously been with Credit Suisse for nearly 15 years– as a managing director in New York.
• Apollo tapping Earl Hunt, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, to co-lead its credit secondaries business.

– This report has been updated to include Rodney Reid joining Moelis.