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Re-branded Deutsche appoints private equity CFO

Neel Mehta, a former finance director at Keyhaven Capital Partners, joins Mark McDonald and Daniel Green in the firm's secondaries team.

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DWS Group, the firm formerly known as Deutsche Asset Management, has hired a finance head as part of efforts to rebuild its private equity business.

Neel Mehta, who becomes CFO of the global private equity unit, will lead the finance and accounting functions and support the growth of DWS’s €2 billion Secondary Opportunity Fund programme, according to a statement.

Mehta joins after three years as finance director at Mayfair Equity Partners, a London-based small- and mid-market buyout firm. Prior to that he was finance manager at small-cap secondaries specialist Keyhaven Capital Partners.

Deutsche Asset Management became DWS in December. It has been rebuilding since its secondaries team spun out in August to form Glendower Capital.

Glendower took on the day-to-day management of DWS’s €2 billion of assets, with DWS remaining the regulated manager with ultimate responsibility for the portfolio. That is not set to change, a spokesman for DWS told Secondaries Investor.

In November DWS hired Mark McDonald, former global head of secondaries advisory in Credit Suisse’s private fund group, as its global head of secondaries. It followed up in January with the appointment of Meketa Investment Group’s Daniel Green as EMEA head of private equity secondaries.

DWS has €77 billion in private market assets, according to its website. The secondaries business is the only private equity function that comes under the DWS banner, according to the spokesman.