Initial success for Headway

Headway Capital Partners closed its debut private equity secondaries fund, Headway Investment Partners (HIP), at €52m. HIP will purchase limited partnership interests in venture capital and private equity funds, portfolios of direct investments and minority stakes in single companies.

Laura Shen, a partner at Headway Capital, said the secondaries market continued to evolve and vendors were becoming increasingly sophisticated in terms of their liquidity requirements and their use of secondaries as a portfolio management tool. HIP’s investor base consists solely of family offices and high net worth individuals, including veteran investors in private equity.

From its modest beginnings in the US in the late 1980s and in Europe in the early 1990s, the secondary private equity market has expanded exponentially with the growth of the primary private equity market.

“The maturation of the secondaries market has resulted in increased segmentation and differentiation,” said Christiaan de Lint, a partner at Headway. “At one extreme are the large players, which participate in well publicised auctions of big portfolios, and at the other are the limited partners, who acquire secondary positions opportunistically in funds with which they already have relationships.

Headway Capital was founded in 2004 by Lint, Sebastian Junoy and Shen, who worked together previously at Coller Capital. All three partners are responsible for investment origination, valuation, execution and management. The team is based in London.