Spring Bridge taps ex-ADIA secondaries head as advisor

Spring Bridge Partners, a secondaries firm formed by two ex-Coller Capital partners, has hired the former head of secondaries and private debt at Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Anwer Farooqui joins as a senior advisor, according to Spring Bridge’s website. Farooqui spent three decades at the world’s third-largest sovereign wealth fund and managed a roughly $5 billion portfolio in his latest role there.

He was a member of ADIA’s pricing and valuation, and investment committees, among others.

Spring Bridge has also hired Ramit Malhotra as an associate. Malhotra spent almost four years as an associate in Credit Suisse’s private fund group in New York, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Former Coller partners Sebastien Burdel and Luca Salvato launched Spring Bridge last year, as Secondaries Investor reported. The firm focuses on four deal types: GP-led transactions; spin-outs; structured deals involving loans, preferred debt or preferred equity; and liquidity to GPs, according to its website.

Over the summer the firm closed its debut deal, backing the spin-out of Wafra Partners, the direct equity investment division of Wafra Investment Advisory Group. Wafra’s investment management team became Granite Bridge Partners.

Spring Bridge backed that deal using independently raised capital, not via a blindpool fund, a spokesman for the firm told Secondaries Investor at the time.

ADIA has around $828 billion in assets under management, according to PEI data. The sovereign fund restructured its private equity business last year to focus on geographic regions. Its PE team had been previously structured across funds, secondaries, principal investments, venture capital and private debt.

The SWF wanted to increase the number and types of deals it invests in with its GPs, including direct investments and secondaries opportunities, an ADIA spokesman told Secondaries Investor in April last year.