Houlihan Lokey

Houlihan Lokey hired Dan Buffery as Managing Director in Capital Solutions Group to expand GP-led secondaries advisory practice in North America. Buffery joins from HarbourVest Partners (Managing Director, Infrastructure/Real Assets) with 10+ years experience in secondary and infrastructure investing.

Leadership read: The hire commits Houlihan Lokey to a more deliberate infrastructure-and-real-assets lane within GP-led secondaries advisory, a corridor it previously served but not with dedicated senior origination capacity of this profile. Buffery's background spans both the buy side (HarbourVest, OPTrust) and investment committee-level decision-making, which means Houlihan Lokey is positioning to advise on transactions where counterpart sophistication is high and deal structuring around continuation vehicles, infrastructure income, and LP optionality is technically demanding. That is a different capability posture than generalist secondaries advisory. The related signals available here are thin on direct comparables, the 12 signals in the set are broadly labelled strategic_hiring but span music management, nonprofit philanthropy, and luxury e-commerce, with only BTG Consulting's lateral-partner moves from Kroll offering any structural parallel. Setting that noise aside, the honest read on the primary signal is that it sits inside a well-documented pattern in private capital advisory: GP-led secondary volume has drawn sustained lateral hiring across advisory platforms as the transaction type matures from niche to institutional-grade product, with Lazard, Jefferies, and Evercore all having expanded secondary advisory benches in prior periods. Across advisory firms building out in this corridor, the functional demand concentrates in two areas: transaction structuring leadership with cross-asset fluency (real assets, infrastructure, and private equity simultaneously), and investor-relations-adjacent commercial capability able to manage LP communication through continuation-fund processes. The market is moving toward operators who can hold both the structuring and the sponsor-client relationship without a handoff layer between them.

curated · 2026-07-10 · context →

Appointed Bodo Krug von Nidda as Managing Director of Capital Solutions Group and Dave Buscaglia as Managing Director of Business Services Group, both based in New York

Leadership read: Houlihan Lokey has added senior capacity in two distinct corridors simultaneously: capital solutions, which sits at the intersection of private credit, structured finance, and special-situations advisory, and business services, a sector vertical that has seen elevated M&A and restructuring activity as private equity portfolios face extended hold periods and refinancing pressure. Adding managing directors in both areas at the same time isn't headcount maintenance, it's a deliberate coverage build, signaling the firm sees deal flow in both lanes as durable enough to warrant senior origination and client-relationship infrastructure now. The broader strategic-hiring signal set across financial services over the last 90 days is relatively thin in direct comparables; the 12 signals tracked span categories from AI advisory platforms to logistics operators and offer limited apples-to-apples read-across. What is visible more broadly is that mid-market and restructuring-adjacent advisory firms have been building out sector and product verticals as rate-driven deal pressure creates differentiated mandates, complexity that generalist coverage cannot efficiently serve. Across advisory businesses at this stage of vertical expansion, the functional demand pattern consistently surfaces in a few places: sector-specialist origination, credit-markets fluency that spans private and structured product, and commercial leadership capable of converting relationship capital into mandates in compressed timeframes. The market is moving toward operators who can hold both the advisory and the capital-solutions conversation in the same client meeting.

curated · 2026-06-08 · context →