Looking back: Top five people moves of 2022 – updated

There’s never a dull moment in the people move side of the secondaries industry, and 2022 was no exception.

Here are the five most notable people moves this year.

5. William Blair taps Mike Custar and Jake Stuiver

The advisory game of musical chairs continued apace in 2022. Notably, Mike Custar, a once veteran of Credit Suisse’s private fund group who left to launch M2O’s secondaries business in 2017, jumped to William Blair in April, as Secondaries Investor reported. He was followed by LP portfolio specialist Jake Stuiver, who joined the investment bank in September. The boutique investment bank also hired Quinn Kolberg from M2O and Gage Alpert from Lazard to build up its team during the year.

4. Baird taps Goldman’s Mejia and Credit Suisse’s Duksin as co-heads

Also in advisory news, Alex Mejia, then head of secondaries advisory at Goldman Sachs, joined mid-market investment bank Baird in December, with Jeremy Duksin, also an MD and senior member of Credit Suisse’s private fund group, following suit and set to join in early 2023. The pair will co-lead the bank’s GP-led-focused business.

3. ICG loses US co-head, enacts role change for global head

In 2022, ICG‘s Strategic Equity team made headlines for raising the largest dedicated pool of capital for GP-led deals. It also bid farewell to Christophe Browne, its North America co-head, and saw global head Andrew Hawkins move to a chairman role.

Ricardo Lombardi now leads the group globally, with Andrea Serra from Blackstone’s tactical opportunities group, onboard as head of Europe and Rob Campbell, who joined the firm in 2016, appointed sole North America head.

2. Ardian drops key execs

In March, Secondaries Investor reported that three senior executives who were part of Ardian‘s key person group for its previous flagship secondaries programme were not part of that group for the firm’s latest secondaries fund. The senior MDs were Benoît Verbrugghe, Olivier Decannière and Ingmar Vallano. It also emerged that Verbrugghe, who became Ardian’s US head in 2010, was no longer a member of the firm’s executive committee and is no longer US head, and that Decannière, who is UK head, is also no longer listed as an executive committee member.

Ardian UK’s Strategic Report, Directors’ Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 31 December 2021, shows that Decannière and Vallano resigned in 2021 and that Verbrugghe resigned on 1 January 2022.

The firm is seeking $15 billion for its ASF IX secondaries fund and is planning to close the vehicle in the second quarter of next year, documents prepared for the the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System show.

1. Apollo hires BlackRock team

Just four years after jumping from Goldman Sachs Asset Management‘s Vintage team to the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock‘s secondaries team were on the move again. In April, it emerged that managing directors Steve Lessar, Konnin Tam and Veena Isaac were to join Apollo Global Management. The development preceded the August launch of S3, Apollo’s sponsor and secondaries solutions business, which launched with a cornerstone commitment from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The team had total new commitments of around $4 billion upon formal launch.

Other notable moves in the secondaries market in 2022 include:

• Montana Capital Partners’ Christian Diller left the firm he co-founded
• Coller Capital partner Louise Boothby joined Glendower Capital
• Sebastien Siou, a partner at Whitehorse Liquidity Partners, left the firm
• Partner Charlie Tingue left Ares Management’s Landmark Partners
• Greenhill hired Faris Elrabie from Alpine Investors to focus on GP-leds and GP stakes/control deals, and Yannick Mir from Campbell Lutyens to work on GP-led and LP deals
• Mantra secondaries head Fabrice Moyne left the firm
• Churchill Asset Management hired 50 South Capital’s Nicholas Lawler
• 17Capital said goodbye to managing directors Richard Golaszewski and Stephen Swentzel
• Coller nabbed Jake Elmhirst from UBS, while Coller partner Amyn Hassanally joined Pantheon as its global head of private equity secondaries
• Strategic Partners Next Gen Leader Sanja Cvetinovic joined Northleaf Capital Partners
• Guggenheim hired Citi’s Orcun Unlu as head of private capital advisory
• Thomas Doyle resurfaced at Pemberton to launch a NAV financing strategy
• Rede Partners appointed Atlantic-Pacific Capital’s Charles Wan to lead its Asia-Pacific expansion

– This story was updated to show Coller Capital partner Amyn Hassanally joined Pantheon as its global head of private equity secondaries in 2022, and that Greenhill hired Faris Elrabie and Yannick Mir.