Mercury Capital Advisors has hired Sabina Sammartino as partner and head of its global secondaries advisory team, a newly-created position which she started at the end of September.

“We’re expanding our secondaries activity with the hiring of Sabina and we’re adding a formal structure to the secondaries team,” Alan Pardee, a managing partner at Mercury, told Secondaries Investor in an interview. “We’re delighted to have her join us to take our secondary advisory business globally to a new level.”

Sammartino will lead the secondaries team, which is seven strong: Imran Hameed, Andrew Osofsky, Jacob Wolfin and Alexander Nguyen in New York; Harry Hedison in Boston and Verena Jung in London. Sammartino will be based in London. Mercury also has offices in Dubai, Singapore, Tokyo, San Francisco, Boston and Washington DC.

Sammartino said she was attracted to the depth of expertise of the secondaries team members, from real estate to private equity, including hedge funds and infrastructure. In particular, she sees the real estate secondaries market rapidly growing. Hedison specialises in the field.

She added she values Mercury’s extensive relationships with both the LP and GP communities, thanks in part to its fundraising business. “GP-led transactions account for an increasing part of the secondary market,” she said. “These relationships are very important.”

Prior to joining Mercury, Sammartino worked at Paul Capital in London as managing director. There, she was responsible for sourcing, underwriting, negotiating and closing aggregate secondaries transactions. She has also worked at GE Equity and at BNL-BNP Paribas.

Mercury was founded six years ago by the former leadership of the Merrill Lynch Private Funds Group.

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