Michael Bego starts secondaries firm

Michael Bego, a former partner at Willowridge Partners, has launched a secondaries firm to focus on the smaller end of the secondaries market, Secondaries Investor has learned.

Bego recently founded Connecticut-based Kline Hill Partners and is seeking $120 million for the firm’s debut fund, with a $180 million hard-cap, he told Secondaries Investor in a recent interview.

The smaller end of the market is often overlooked and is less competitive than the larger end, Bego said. “It’s about taking a professional and institutional approach and giving sellers wanting to dispose of smaller amounts of assets the sort of care and attention they should have,” he said.

Jared Barlow, a senior vice-president at Partners Group between 2006 and 2012, has also joined the firm. Barlow was deal captain and head of Partners’ US secondaries program where he sourced and analysed secondaries transactions, negotiated deal terms and pricing, and built up a team of secondaries professionals, according to his LinkedIn profile.

PE Hub first wrote about Bego launching a new firm.

Kline Hill Partners will focus on deals in the single-digit million range, Bego said. The firm will primarily look at buyout and venture capital funds, as well as real estate and energy assets, and can also make direct secondaries deals, although this would be a minority focus of the fund. About 80 to 90 percent of the fund’s focus will be on North America, with the rest on Europe and Asia, Bego said.

Bego declined to say which investors the firm is targeting.

At Willowridge, Bego, who left the firm in January, led more than 90 deals and focused on secondaries for almost a decade, according to his blog.

Bego isn’t the only secondaries professional who has set up his own firm in recent months. Yann Robard, who headed the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s secondaries platform until July, recently launched a new secondaries firm, Whitehorse Liquidity Partners, Secondaries Investor reported in October.