Grosvenor spinout Aldea Capital joins Barings PE platform

The five-member investment team of Aldea Capital Partners has joined Barings Alternative Investments, including co-founders Mina Nazemi and Patrick O’Hara and director Allen Ruiz.

“The Aldea team has been integrated into the Barings platform,” Nazemi told Buyouts. She said the move will allow them to bring a “broader capability to clients beyond emerging managers,” a previous area of focus.

Barings is part of the MassMutual Financial Group, which acquired the asset management arm of the historic British bank, which collapsed in 1995 in the wake of a financial swindle by one employee. The alternative investments division builds customized private-equity and real-asset portfolios for institutional clients, with $53.7 billion of assets under management. Nazemi is now a managing director and head of co-investments.

“We’re investing across private equity, real estate, real assets, primary funds,” she said, “including everything from buyouts, venture, growth, energy, timber, agriculture, co-investments, secondaries, [to] small and emerging managers, independent sponsors, fundless-sponsor-type transactions.”

Anthony Sciacca, head of Barings Alternative Investments, described the deal with Aldea as “a team lift-out, more than anything.” Aldea, a Los Angeles-based separate-accounts manager, was formed in 2016 from the spin-out of a customized fund investment team previously of GCM Grosvenor and Credit Suisse.

“As we started talking to them in the normal course of business, we found that, as we were assessing our capabilities, we felt they were very complementary,” Sciacca said. With investors asking for more customized solutions, Nazemi’s relationships and expertise in the lower-middle market and emerging manage space were attractive.

Nazemi cited a focus on true middle-market deals, at a time when many teams have moved upmarket, as a common interest between the two groups.

The decision to formally join Barings, made at the end of last year, was the culmination of a gradual process, she said: “We’ve been working with BAI very closely for the last three, four months… We’ve already integrated pipelines where we’re looking at opportunities.”

“We were working together functionally and then felt like this is a much better way to execute, as one team,” Sciacca added. Nazemi works out of Los Angeles.

Action Item: Read Barings’s firm overview here.

Photo courtesy of Mina Pacheco Nazemi