Morgan Stanley Investment Management‘s global head of secondaries has left the business, three months after multiple members of the bank’s business joined HIG Capital.
Nash Waterman, a more than two-decade veteran of the global investment bank, departed the firm in the past week, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
A spokesperson for Morgan Stanley confirmed Waterman’s departure.
Waterman has been head of PE secondaries since 2020. He was an investment committee member and the lead portfolio manager for all of Morgan Stanley IM’s funds that are focused on GP-led single-asset secondaries, according to an archived version of his profile on the bank’s website.
He has either led or participated in every GP-led CV transaction that the team has executed on, the archived profile notes.
The bank has raised at least four vehicles dedicated to private equity GP-leds, according to Secondaries Investor data. Ashbridge Transformational Secondaries Fund II, which closed short of the $3 billion target that a spokesperson for the firm shared with Secondaries Investor in 2022, is nearly four times larger than its predecessor, which closed on $675 million in 2018.
“Ashbridge, Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s GP-led secondaries strategy, has been consolidated under MSIM’s Private Equity Solutions, led by Neha Champaneria Markle,” a spokesperson for the bank told Secondaries Investor. “Private Equity Solutions is MSIM’s multi-manager private equity platform, including primary fund investing, co-investments and secondaries.”
All the Ashbridge funds are fully deployed, according to the spokesperson.
It is unclear if the bank intends to raise future Ashbridge funds.
LPs who committed to Ashbridge II include the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Pension Plan, Iceland’s Gildi Lifeyrissjodur Pension Fund, Seattle-based Kennedy Ries Family Foundation and State of Wisconsin Investment Board.
Waterman’s departure comes three months after four members of the bank’s GP-led secondaries investment team left to join HIG Capital. Miami-headquartered HIG said in August it had hired Dan Wieder, Yash Gupta, Austin Gerber and Joe Holleran from Morgan Stanley to launch its GP Solutions Platform.
Source: secondariesinvestor.com
