Northleaf Young Gun promoted to MD

Northleaf Capital Partners has promoted a secondaries professional to the most senior rank in its investment team.

Matthew Sparks, who has been with the Toronto-headquartered investment manager for more than nine years, has been promoted to managing director, according to a statement. The move reflects his “leadership role in the development and management of Northleaf’s private equity secondaries programme”.

Sparks ranked 13th in Secondaries Investor‘s 2018 Young Guns ranking, a list of the most impressive secondaries professionals under the age of 36. He was praised for his “investment judgement and people management”, among other attributes.

Northleaf held an $800 million final close on its sophomore secondaries fund in September and collected $500 million in separately managed accounts. The firm is expecting the fund to be invested roughly 50-50 between LP stake sales and complex secondaries deals across private equity, private credit and infrastructure, managing director Michael Flood told Secondaries Investor at the time.

Northleaf makes secondaries investments of up to $100 million. It has $12 billion of total private equity, private credit and infrastructure assets under management, according to Secondaries Investor data.