Mercury Capital Advisors (“Mercury”), among the world’s elite global private fund placement and advisory firms, today announced that it has appointed Michael Ricciardi, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of the Firm as Chairman Emeritus. In his new role, Mr. Ricciardi will focus on business development and sourcing new client mandates.

Mr. Ricciardi founded Mercury Capital Advisors in 2009 along with two of his partners as a spinoff from the Merrill Lynch Private Equity Funds Group. Since its inception and under his leadership, Mercury has completed more than 125 fundraising, secondary advisory, co-investment and direct deal placements across multiple alternative asset classes, closed over $100bn in fund commitments, and became a prominent global placement and advisory firm.

Mr. Ricciardi said: “I look forward to the next phase in my career with great anticipation and excitement. I am enthusiastic about contributing to Mercury’s growth as it continues to deliver exceptional fundraising and advisory solutions to our clients.”

Mr. Ricciardi will retire from the executive management and operations of the Firm to focus on his new role, while the day-to-day management will be handled by the Firm’s Managing Partners John Franklin and Enrique Cuan.

Mr. Franklin and Mr. Cuan, commenting on Mr. Ricciardi’s transition, said: “The Firm has greatly benefitted from Mr. Ricciardi’s passion for helping clients grow their franchises and we look forward to continuing to leverage his network to develop new opportunities and relationships for the Firm in the future.”

This announcement comes as the Firm posted very strong first half results on the back of advising on several fund closings year to date, including those of Ocean Link, MML, Valor, Gaw, Blue Torch and Investcorp. Building upon this momentum, last week the Firm announced that it has hired four senior distribution professionals. In addition to these senior hires, it also strengthened its team by adding eight other staff in recent months across different functions, including distribution, administration and project management.

About Mercury Capital Advisors:

Mercury Capital Advisors is a leading global private fund and investment advisory firm. Founded in 2009 as a spinoff from the Merrill Lynch Private Funds Group, the firm assists general partners and limited partners in fundraising and secondary advisory, co-investment and direct deal placement. The firm specializes in alternative assets including private equity, real estate, infrastructure, credit, venture capital, secondaries and special situations investments. Mercury has advised on over 100 fundraisings and closed over $100bn in fund commitments since its inception in 2009.

With offices in New York, London, Singapore, Tokyo and New Delhi, the firm maintains strong relationships with a broad range of the world’s pre-eminent institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds, corporate and public pension plans, insurance companies, endowments, family offices, foundations, secondary funds, funds of funds and consultants.

Mercury Capital Advisors is a 100% owned subsidiary of Investcorp, a global investment manager specializing in alternative investments across private equity, real estate, credit, absolute return strategies, GP stakes and infrastructure. As of March 31, 2021, Investcorp Group had US $35.4 billion in total AUM, including assets managed by third-party managers, and employed over 430 people from 45 nationalities globally across its offices in 12 countries spanning the US, Europe, GCC and Asia.

Source: BusinessWire

Mercury Capital Advisors today announced that it has added four senior professionals to amplify distribution efforts for the firm.

Matthew Haimes, based in London, Jill Cohen and Jennifer Tunney, both based in New York, have joined the firm as Partners, while Sara Modalal, based in Dubai, has joined as Principal. All four hires joined in Spring 2021.

“These four new team members bring decades of invaluable industry experience across institutional asset raising, investor relations and client solutions. We are excited to see the value Matt, Jill, Jen and Sara will add as Mercury continues its commitment to excellence and to our clients,” said John Franklin and Enrique Cuan, Managing Partners at Mercury.

Prior to joining Mercury, Mr. Haimes was Global Head of Investor Partners at Safanad, a $2bn PE and RE investment firm, and held a similar position at Quilvest. He previously served as Head of European Consumer Groups in Corporate Finance at both Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank. Mr. Haimes also managed the group at JP Morgan’s Private Bank that oversaw relationships with both single family offices and financial sponsors in London, and ran UHNW private banking for the UK and Nordics at Credit Suisse. 

Ms. Cohen was previously Senior Managing Director at Avenue Capital Group, a $9B investment management firm specializing in credit, special situations and distressed investments. She also served as Managing Director at Pinnacle Trust Partners, an independent boutique placement agent for alternative investments. Other prior positions include Director of Institutional Investments and Investor Relations at Salient Partners and Head of Capital Introduction for the Americas at Citigroup.

Before Mercury, Ms. Tunney was Managing Director in Private Markets Business Development at The Rohatyn Group, a $5bn+ emerging markets focused asset manager encompassing private equity, infrastructure, real assets and private credit. She has more than twenty years of investment banking experience after starting her career at JP Morgan and, during her time there, focused on credit, interest rates and commodity markets.

Ms. Modalal previously worked in the Dubai office of Principal Global Investors – a $550B+ global asset management firm  – where she managed institutional sales for the Middle East and Africa region. Prior to that, Ms. Modalal spent five years at Deutsche Bank Asset Management in Frankfurt, Germany, where she was part of the Global Client Group, and dedicated her time focusing on German corporates and multinational clients.

These appointments continue to fuel Mercury’s momentum in 2021 as the firm posted very strong first half results on the back of advising on several fund closings year to date.

About Mercury Capital Advisors

Mercury Capital Advisors is a leading global private fund and investment advisory firm. Founded in 2009 as a spinoff from the Merrill Lynch Private Funds Group, the firm assists general partners and limited partners in fundraising and secondary advisory, co-investment and direct deal placement. The firm specializes in alternative assets including private equity, real estate, infrastructure, credit, venture capital, secondaries and special situations investments. Mercury has advised on over 100 fundraisings and closed over $100bn in fund commitments since its inception in 2009.

With offices in New York, London, Singapore, Tokyo and New Delhi, the firm maintains strong relationships with a broad range of the world’s pre-eminent institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds, corporate and public pension plans, insurance companies, endowments, family offices, foundations, secondary funds, funds of funds and consultants.

Mercury Capital Advisors is a 100% owned subsidiary of Investcorp, a global investment manager specializing in alternative investments across private equity, real estate, credit, absolute return strategies, GP stakes and infrastructure. As of March 31, 2021, Investcorp Group had US $35.4 billion in total AUM, including assets managed by third-party managers, and employed over 430 people from 45 nationalities globally across its offices in 12 countries spanning the US, Europe, GCC and Asia.

Institutional investors and family offices in a recent survey cite digitization, aging population and climate change as the most important trends that will shape the global economic landscape in the coming decades, and are investing across these trends through both private and public markets.

Investcorp, a provider and manager of alternative investment products, conducted the survey in partnership with Mercury Capital Advisors, an institutional capital raising and investment advisory firm; IMD Business School; and Banque Pâris Bertrand, a Swiss-regulated private bank.

“Institutional investors’ view of the major trends that are to shape the global economic landscape over the next three decades can give us significant insight into where capital is likely to flow in both the near- and long-term,” Rishi Kapoor, Investcorp’s co-chief executive officer, said in a statement.

“In this year’s survey, we see digitization and AI as an area ripe for investment. An aging global population and ongoing concerns with climate change also provide ample opportunities for these investors to capture the economic upside associated with these mega trends either through direct investment or, more commonly, by allocating to external managers.”

Top Trends

Automation, digitization and AI boosted its position as investors’ top trend, shooting up 26 points from the inaugural survey in 2019 to 95% of investors. Fifty-three percent said they were likely to invest in this trend through a combination of public and private markets.

The majority of investors expect the automation, digitization and AI trend to be significant over the next two decades, with meaningful progress in key industry segments such as digital infrastructure, robotics and specialized chips occurring seven years from now, according to Investcorp.

But they are also cautious in their expectations, mindful of cyber risk, national data privacy laws and societal debate on the ethics of AI as factors that may disrupt developments in this trend.

Sixty-nine percent of investors in the poll again named an aging population as the second most important long-term trend, albeit down 9 percentage points from the 2019 survey. They expect it to remain important until at least 2050, perhaps indicative of both the large funding gap that exists today and the equally attractive investment opportunity it presents over the long term, Investcorp said.

They expect opportunities in health care services and retirement homes/medical centers to be meaningful in about 10 years. At the same time, investors believe that developments in local immigration laws, black swan events such as pandemics, natural disasters or war, or even a change in life expectancy or birthrates could all influence their investment outlooks.

Climate change ranked as the third most significant trend, cited by 65% of survey participants, unchanged from 2019. Investcorp said it was notable that nearly all investors expect climate change to significantly shape the global economy over the next two decades, consistent with global developments in addressing climate change risks and opportunities.

Sixty-three percent of participants said they were likely to invest in the impact of climate change through both public and private markets, as opposed to favoring one over the other.

About half of investors expect meaningful developments across several industry segments this decade, with the biggest opportunities occurring in the renewable energy and clean technology segments.

However, they cited changes to global political will and technological advances in battery storage or hydrogen as two key factors that may disrupt their current thinking on the significance of climate change as an investment opportunity over the very long term.

Furthermore, some investors specifically noted that changes in the condition of the Gulf Stream — one of Earth’s major climate-regulating ocean currents, which influences weather patterns and sea levels on both sides of the Atlantic — could disrupt the timeline and capital requirements, as well as the risks associated with climate-related investment opportunities.

The following round out the surveyed investors’ top 10 megatrends:

• Electric vehicles and autonomous driving: 62%.
• Personalized health care: 60%.
• Growing dominance of China: 59%.
• Digital and cryptocurrencies: 59%.
• Urbanization and smart cities: 38%.
• Sustainability and the circular economy: 37%.
• Redefining global trade: 26%.

Two of these trends are new to the list this year: China’s growing dominance and cryptocurrencies. Investcorp said this demonstrates that a significant portion of respondents see them not as short-term trends, but ones that are here to stay and deserving of significant attention and capital allocation.

It also pointed out that urbanization and smart cities and redefining global trade, two of the top five trends in the first survey, both decreased in significance this year to eighth and 10th places, replaced by autonomous and electric vehicles and personalized health care in fourth and fifth places.

Fund Allocation and Returns

According to the survey, investors continue to prefer allocating funds to external managers, the choice of 38.6% of respondents, regardless of whether the investment strategy is exclusively private, exclusively public or mixed. This compared with 21.8% who prefer direct investing and 18.4% who combine the approaches.

Twenty-one percent said they do not allocate to trends they see as important. They are not doing so mainly because of a lack of expertise, or they think it is too soon or they have not yet found credible investment opportunities.

Although 85% of investors either lowered or kept return expectations the same over the past year, their net target return expectations — particularly for private market-focused investors — were still higher than those who expressed more optimism about future returns.

The survey found that institutional investors were tilted toward either private or public markets. Private market-tilted investors, who made up 35% of the sample, had the highest expectations in terms of future overall target returns, exceeding those of public market-tilted investors, 42%, by 400 basis points.

Source: ThinkAdvisor