Whitehorse loses partner and Next Gen Leader

The preferred equity specialist is seeking as much as $6bn for its latest fund, which could bring its AUM to at least $14bn.

Whitehorse Liquidity Partners has lost a senior investment professional who was promoted to the partnership just over a year ago.

Sebastien Siou has left the firm, according to a source familiar with the matter. An automated email reply to his email address confirmed that he is no longer with the company.

Siou spent seven years at CPP Investments in its secondaries team before joining Whitehorse in 2019. He was the top-ranked professional in Secondaries Investor‘s Next Gen Leaders of secondaries list in 2018 and was praised by industry veteran Thomas Lee for being “bright, articulate and poised”.

It is unclear where Siou is headed and neither Whitehorse nor Siou responded to requests for comment.

Whitehorse has nine partners, including managing partner and founder, Yann Robard, according to its website. The Toronto-headquartered firm would bring its assets under management up to at least $14 billion if it hits the hard-cap on its latest fund, Whitehorse Liquidity Partners V, US pension documents revealed in March.

Fund V has $6 billion hard-cap, according to the documents from Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System.

There was $7.8 billion of preferred equity deal volume last year, in line with 2020, according to research by investment bank Evercore. In the first half of this year, deal volume for preferred equity was $5 billion, a 41 percent increase on the same period last year, according to Evercore’s H1 2022 Secondary Market report.

– Rod James and Chris Witkowsky contributed to this report.