How Mercer Secondaries closed its first infrastructure GP-led secondary deal as a lead buyer with PitchBook
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Mercer is part of Marsh McLennan, a global professional services firm with businesses in insurance brokerage, risk management, reinsurance services, talent management, investment management and advisory, as well as management consulting. Its four main operating companies are Marsh, Guy Carpenter, Mercer, and Oliver Wyman.
Mercer has several distinct lines of business, namely: health and benefits, investments and retirement, workforce and careers, and M&A advisory services. For 80 years, Mercer has been providing trusted advice and solutions to build healthier and more sustainable futures for its clients, colleagues, and communities. It is one of the world’s largest investment advisors with over US $17.5 trillion in assets under advisement and US $550 billion assets under management as of latest available 2024 figures.
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Benjamin BaumannPartner, Global Head of Secondaries, Zurich, Switzerland -
Dusan SenderakPrincipal, Secondaries, Zurich, Switzerland -
Felix JaegerPrincipal, Secondaries, Zurich, Switzerland
Mercer’s global alternatives platform functions as a specialist group within Mercer’s Investments division, uniting investment research, portfolio management and solutions, and investment operations expertise across various sectors. Since 2014, the firm’s global secondaries team has used PitchBook when providing discretionary investment services to its diverse clientele in the rapidly evolving alternatives space.
“Mercer has a long history of working closely with sophisticated institutional investors on a global basis to provide the full spectrum of alternative investment services and solutions,” said Mercer Partner and Global Head of Secondaries Benjamin Baumann.
Mercer’s secondary team invests across all private market asset classes, including sustainability-focused opportunities, and across all transaction types within each asset class, including GP-led, LP-led, direct secondaries, and structured transactions.
Utilizing PitchBook funds data to enhance Mercer’s alternatives strategy
PitchBook advances Mercer’s substantial internal fund data by providing complementary insights into underlying assets within a fund’s portfolio, the risk profile and stage, investment geographies, and even historical performance. PitchBook’s data on private fund managers and their associated fund families, including insights into those funds’ transaction activity and portfolios, are particularly helpful for Mercer’s secondary team. The fund families feature helps Mercer quickly compare fund strategies over time for individual general partners (GPs) and PitchBook-categorized peer groups, providing a clearer understanding of the current investment landscape.
“PitchBook provides a large amount of company data on private market funds that we incorporate into our investment process. The platform regularly adds new tools to ensure that the breadth and depth of information match the rapidly evolving financial market landscape,” said Mercer’s Principal, Secondaries Dusan Senderak.
As a result, consulting PitchBook fund data has become a routine step in the investment process, especially as the firm receives daily sell-side emails from brokers and intermediaries regarding new secondary opportunities.
“Should we engage in full due diligence on an opportunity,” he said, “we regularly use PitchBook Screeners and PitchBook Benchmarks to build comp sets and benchmark the target companies in our transaction against their peers.”
Pricing an asset accurately to achieve a big win
As a lead buyer in a GP-led secondary transaction involving a bandwidth infrastructure company operating dense fiber networks in Europe, Mercer needed to estimate the company’s fair market value.
PitchBook’s research on EMEA’s telecommunications sector and company data, including the Morningstar equity research reports and sector coverage, provided Mercer with valuable insights into public comparables and the industry outlook. During the due diligence phase, Mercer’s secondary team used PitchBook’s comps analysis functionality to assess both public and M&A comparables, enabling them to benchmark the company’s valuation against the broader comps universe.
Enhancing investment strategies with PitchBook Research
PitchBook’s research on private markets, particularly in industry & technology, keeps Mercer’s secondary team updated on developments, emerging trends, and deal activity in relevant sectors.
“We get recaps of important industry conferences, invitations to webinars with other industry experts discussing the outlook for select industries, and reports covering specific private markets activities, investment opportunities, and risks in select industries,” said Senderak.
“PitchBook’s strong support function swiftly assists us with any specific requests regarding functionality and data availability,” he added.
These PitchBook opportunities and resources are essential to Mercer’s global secondaries team. In conjunction with Morningstar’s independent equity research on company trends and ratings found on PitchBook’s Research Center, Mercer easily gains a holistic analysis of public companies that supports its informed decision-making.
With its ongoing use of PitchBook for secondary transactions, Mercer ensures that it remains at the forefront of industry trends, data, and other relevant market information.
