Portfolio Advisors to launch GP-led restructurings fund

Portfolio Advisors is expanding its secondaries offerings with the launch of a dedicated fund focusing on GP-led restructurings.

Stephen Sloan, who joined the firm last month having been private capital advisory head at Greenhill, will co-lead the effort, Brian Murphy, managing director and co-head of global marketing, told Secondaries Investor.

The firm has made another appointment who will join Sloan in leading the unit, Murphy added, declining to comment on the identity of the person.

“We have been doing GP restructurings through our traditional secondaries fund, but it has always been a minority piece of it,” Murphy said, adding that such deals have accounted for no more than one-fifth of the firm’s secondaries funds.

“We didn’t want it to go beyond 20 percent because we didn’t want to change the fund’s strategy,” he said. “Launching an independent GP restructuring fund will then allow our clients that are very interested in that space to adjust their exposure to any level they would like.”

Secondaries Investor reported in September that Sloan was set to join the Darien, Connecticut-headquartered firm. Alongside Sloan, Portfolio Advisors has hired two former Partners Group professionals – Scott Higbee and Brooks Lindberg – to join its senior management team.

Higbee was previously a partner at Partners Group where he was head of the firm’s US business and also spent time at GoldPoint Partners, a private equity affiliate of New York Life Investment Management. He has joined as co-head of global markets.

Lindberg was also a partner at the firm and was global head of distribution until 2014. He will lead product development and distribution of registered investment products across Portfolio Advisors’ private equity, private credit and real estate business lines.

Hugh Perloff leads the firm’s secondaries investment team.

The firm also plans to launch a 1940 Act Regulated Investment Company product which focuses on US retail investors and which will comprise a secondaries strategy, Murphy said. Higbee and Lindberg will work on this offering, having launched a similar product at Partners Group, he added.

The RIC product and GP-leds fund will bring the firm’s types of secondaries offerings to six, including global private equity, real estate, credit and Asia strategies.

Portfolio Advisors ranked 17th in the SI 30 list of the biggest secondaries fundraisers over the most recent five year period. It raised $3.2 billion between 2015 and June 2020.

The firm is seeking as much as $2.25 billion for its latest private equity secondaries flagship, Secondary Fund IV, documents prepared for Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System show. It is also in market with Asia Secondary Fund VII which has an undisclosed target, according to PEI data.

The firm expects to grow its secondaries assets under management – which stand at around $8 billion – by two-to-three times over the next five years, Murphy said, declining to comment on specific fundraising.

“We expect it [secondaries] to be a major growth driver for our firm.”