Wellington Management Co., the mutual fund giant best known for stock- and bond-picking, hired Hamilton Lane Inc.’s Alex Behm to lead its foray into the hot market of buying and selling private equity stakes.
Behm, who previously worked as a deal lead at Hamilton Lane, will build and manage secondaries strategies for Wellington’s evergreen private investing business that caters to wealthy investors, the Boston-based firm said in an emailed statement. He’ll work closely with Mike Trihy, who joined in August.
Wellington is in the middle of a major transformation, embarking on a new marketing campaign and recruiting aggressively from Wall Street banks and alternative investment firms as it seeks to grow in more lucrative private markets.
The firm and other traditional asset managers have been flocking to private markets, a $24 trillion industry by one estimate. They’ve been grappling with outflows and narrowing margins as clients leave mutual funds for cheaper index products.
The secondaries market has become one of the fastest-growing corners in finance as private equity firms struggle to exit investments in their funds, pushing yield-starved backers to offload their stakes. This week,