Cliffwater’s move reflects the buyside’s growing semi-liquid shift

There's a new type of entrant to the secondaries buyside, and it's not your typical buyout-come-secondaries firm.

By Adam Le

This week, Cliffwater , an investment consultant that is also a fund manager, said it was ramping up its private equity secondaries investment business with the hire of a J.P. 摩根 Asset Management executive. Cliffwater may be better known for its industry advice services and research. What readers might not know is that the firm runs a $41 billion private debt business and says it deployed more than $3 billion into private credit secondaries over the past three years. Overall, it has about $111 billion in combined assets under management and advisement.

Cliffwater says it has been investing in private equity secondaries for some time, and it is this part of the business it’s looking to ramp up. In February, it took over a 40 Act Barings fund and has plans to scale this part of its business “aggressively”, co-head of asset management Blake Nesbitt tells Secondaries Investor.

Cliffwater’s move comes as other consultant/fund managers enter the secondaries space. Cambridge Associates made its first foray into fundraising and managing a pooled...

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