Coller Capital poaches BlackRock executive

Private equity secondaries firm Coller Capital has poached an executive from BlackRock Private Equity Partners, as the Asian PE secondaries market continues to grow, AsianInvestor can reveal.

Yang Zhan joined the London-based firm last month as an investment principal in Hong Kong, adding to a number of other recent hires, said a spokesman. He did not provide names or further details of how the team had grown.

Yang had been a director at BlackRock Private Equity Partners – and its predecessor firm, Swiss Re Private Equity Partners – for nearly six years. Before that he was with Adveq Management in Zurich, Beijing and Hong Kong.

BlackRock did not confirm by press time.whether Yang would be or had been replaced.

Private equity secondaries refers to limited partners’ positions in PE funds and portfolios of unquoted companies from their corporate or institutional owners.

This is seen to be an area of demand growth in Asia among private and institutional clients. For example, Korea’s Government Employees Pension Service invited bids to run two global PE secondaries mandates.

Meanwhile, Chinese wealth manager Noah is readying two secondaries funds for launch, and multi-family offices such as Hong Kong-based Silverhorn Investment Advisors have recently been tipping secondaries as a good opportunity.

Founded in 1990, Coller closed its seventh secondaries fund last year, with capital commitments of $7.15 billion from some 170 institutional investors.