On the move, 5.14.2018 – CPPIB gets new head of PE

PRIVATE EQUITY FIRMS

Jonathan Laifer joined BelHealth Investment Partners as an associate. Laifer was previously an investment banking associate in the healthcare group at Goldman Sachs focusing on M&A, leveraged finance and equity transactions.

Cerberus Capital Management: Matt Zames joined as president, while Frank Bruno was promoted to co-CEO. Lee Millstein was appointed president of the international business. Zames most recently served as COO of JP Morgan Chase. Bruno will be co-CEO alongside Steve Feinberg, Cerberus’s founder.

Comvest Partners named Sarah Robson and Andrew Nicoletti vice presidents of business development. They had held senior business-development positions at Atlantic Street Capital and OpenGate Capital, respectively.

CRG, the healthcare investment firm, appointed Todd Holmes a principal. Holmes previously was a senior associate at Third Rock Ventures. He was also a founding member and director at Gurnet Point Capital.

Deutsche Bank: DWS, the asset-management unit, named Neel Mehta chief financial officer of the global private equity business.  Mehta Previously was finance director at Mayfair Equity Partners.

Frazier Healthcare Partners: Glen Moller joined as an operating partner on the growth buyout team. Most recently, Moller was CEO at ArroHealth.

Harvest Partners: Doug Campbell joined as a partner. Campbell previously was a managing director in the special-situations fund at Oaktree Capital Management.

HGGC: Six executives, including Dan Stanko, Chad Clawson, Bennett Nussbaum and Scott St. Clair, joined the firm. HGGC also promoted Bill Conrad to principal and named Matt Roesch a vice president.

Investcorp: Hazem Ben-Gacem, who has been leading Investcorp’s European corporate investment team since 2012, will join Rishi Kapoor as co-CEO. Mohammed Al-Shroogi is retiring as co-CEO effective in August but will remain senior adviser. Daniel Lopez-Cruz will succeed Ben-Gacem at the Europe corporate investment business.

Lindsay Goldberg hired Stephen DeFalco, former CEO of Crane & Co, as a partner. Crane supplies currency paper and anti-counterfeiting technology to the U.S. government. Lindsay Goldberg invested in the company in 2008.

Renovo Capital hired Chris Dupré as a partner. He previously was a partner at Wingate Partners.

Snow Phipps Group, a lower-middle market private equity firm, named Gary Spitz managing director of financial operations.  Spitz previously was chief financial officer at Coriant.

Starwood Energy Group Global: Philipp Pletka joined as managing director, while Alex Daberko was promoted to managing director. Pletka was most recently a senior member of BlackRock‘s energy and power PE team.

TPG: John Kerry, former U.S. secretary of state, joined Rise Fund as a senior adviser, Bloomberg reported. Kerry will help identify investments and advise portfolio companies, with a focus on renewable energy.

Turnspire Capital Partners: Simon Jones joined the firm. Jones is currently executive chairman of One Discovery Inc and was previously chairman and CEO of 3SI Security Systems.

PORTFOLIO COMPANIES

Coveo, the Québec City provider of artificial intelligence-powered insight engines, named Candice Faktor to the board. Faktor recently was a general manager at storytelling platform Wattpad. Coveo’s backers include Evergreen Coast Capital, the PE affiliate of Elliott Management, BDC Capital, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, Tandem Expansion Fund and Telesystem.

Global Franchise Group, an owner of a portfolio of franchise brands, named Geoff Goodman executive vice president of the Round Table Pizza brand. Previously, Goodman had been president at Remarkable Brands. Global Franchise is a portfolio company of Levine Leichtman Capital Partners.

Hufcor: Koben Miceli was appointed CEO of the OpenGate Capital portfolio company. Miceli will continue as CEO of Power Partners, another of OpenGate’s companies. Prior to joining Power Partners, Miceli was executive vice president of global operations for Dematic Corp.

SERVICE PROVIDERS

Alvarez & Marsal hired Jeffrey Huddleston as a managing director in the Houston office. Huddleston specializes in advising distressed companies, lenders and creditors both in court and out-of-court restructurings and turnarounds. Huddleston previously was a managing director at Conway MacKenzie and helped launch its energy practice in Houston.

Arma Partners, an M&A advisory firm focused on the communications, media and technology sector, named Paul Harvey group business development director; Abhimanyu Toor a director focused on M&A transaction execution, and Fabian Zimmer a director focused on technology in the DACH region.

Distributed Credit Chain: Matthew Chang was appointed an adviser to the project. Chang is a managing director at KKR. Distributed Credit Chain, of Hong Kong, is a blockchain company developing a distributed banking public chain.

Evercore: Bill Thompson joined as a senior managing director and co-CEO of the private capital advisory group. Thompson will help expand the bank’s real estate advisory business. Thompson has worked in leadership roles at LaSalle Advisors, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette/Credit Suisse and Greenhill.

Goodwin: Eric Goldstein joined the law firm’s New York office as a partner in the private equity and private investment funds practice. He joined from Insight Venture Partners, where he was deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer.

Morgan Stanley: Vipin Chhajer is joining the financial institutions group in London as an executive director focused on fintech. Chhajer previously headed European financial technology investment banking at Deutsche Bank.

Sidley Austin added Michael Schiavone, Daniel O’Shea and David Ni as partners in the law firm’s capital-markets practice. They’re based in the New York office. They join from O’Melveny & Myers, where Schiavone chaired the capital-markets practice.

Ziegler: Aaron Schroeder is rejoining as senior vice president on the investment banking team in senior living finance. Schroeder previously worked at Ziegler from 2003 to 2014, primarily serving in the firm’s West region. He recently was assistant director of corporate strategy at Northwestern Mutual.

LIMITED PARTNERS

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board: Shane Feeney, current senior managing director and global head of private investments, becomes global head of private equity, overseeing direct PE, funds, secondaries and co-investments, and Asian activity. Pierre Lavallée, senior managing director and global head of investment partnerships, is leaving. CPPIB also announced several promotions, including John Graham to head of credit investments and Suyi Kim to head of Asia-Pacific. Graham and Kim will join CPPIB’s senior management team.

Healthcare Private Equity Association elected Terry Woodward president as of July 1. Woodward, director at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, co-founded the healthcare private equity practice at OTPP. He has been a director of the healthcare PE group since 2014.

PROMOTIONS

BelHealth Investment Partners: The Care Advantage portfolio company promoted Tim Hanold to CEO. Hanold joined the company in 2018. He recently was president and executive vice president of sales as well as leader of the personal care division.

Guardian Capital Partners promoted Christopher S. Fugaro to principal and head of business development. Fugaro joined the private equity firm in 2010.