Houlihan Lokey expanded its private funds group with the appointment of a team of four managing directors from Greenhill & Co. to expand its U.S. primary practice, including Tom Donovan, who joined the firm as managing director and head of U.S. primary.
These hires follow the announcement in December 2023 of the acquisition of Triago Management Development in a major expansion of Houlihan Lokey’s Private Funds Group, which is led by Andy Lund and Cristina Forcina Westermann as global co-heads.
Based in Chicago, Donovan has more than 20 years of experience in raising private capital. At Greenhill, he built and led the primary private capital advisory business, having joined the firm in 2021 from Mercury Capital Advisors, where he was head of North America. Donovan formerly held a senior role in the private capital advisory team at Lazard and started his career and spent eight years with Credit Suisse in New York and Chicago.
In addition to Donovan, Ryan Carey and Sean Joffe joined Houlihan Lokey as managing directors and co-heads of U.S. primary distribution, while Paul Tam joined the company as a managing director to leader U.S. primary distribution on the West Coast.
Based in New York, Carey and Joffe previously worked together at Greenhill helping to lead the firm’s U.S. distribution effort. Carey has worked for the past 19 years in capital raising and distribution roles at Jefferies, Sixpoint Partners, HSBC and Merrill Lynch. Prior to joining Houlihan Lokey, Joffe was a managing director at both Greenhill and Sixpoint Partners and worked in senior distribution roles focused on institutional capital raising. Joffe began his career in the financial sponsors group at Credit Suisse.
Based in San Francisco, spent the last three years at Greenhill in a similar role to his new position with Houlihan Lokey. Prior to this, Tam was a partner at Mercury Capital Advisors, where he focused on institutional capital raising in the western region of the U.S. and Canada. During his 30-year career, he also has held senior roles at Brookfield Asset Management, J.P. Morgan and UBS and Morgan Stanley.
“Bringing on board such experienced and well-respected industry professionals to head our U.S. primary practice will be of tremendous benefit for our team and, most importantly, our clients,” Andy Lund, global co-head of Houlihan Lokey’s private funds group, said. “With these hires, we have realized our goal of establishing a truly integrated set of advisory services across the alternative capital universe, from primary to directs and secondaries and GP private equity advisory. This unified team, alongside our leading capital markets and financial sponsors groups, now offers our clients an unmatched suite of solutions for our private capital clients.”
“This is an exciting time to be joining the firm and to be part of the scaling of Houlihan Lokey’s private funds group,” Donovan said. “With the recent acquisition, the firm has shown its clear commitment to being the leader in private capital advisory. Allied to its global presence, deep sector expertise, senior team and a truly dynamic culture, we see Houlihan Lokey as ideally placed to deliver outstanding outcomes for all of our clients.”
“We are delighted to welcome our four new managing directors to the firm, all of whom share our ambition to be the leading private capital advisor by not only providing the highest-quality advice but also pursuing a fiercely client-centric approach through close collaboration across all of the Houlihan Lokey businesses, which is the trademark of our culture,” Scott Adelson, co-president and global co-head of corporate finance at Houlihan Lokey, said.
