This August, Perry will have spent a quarter century working for Strategic Partners, one of the largest secondaries investors in the world. In that time, the firm’s ownership has changed three times, from the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, to Credit Suisse, to, finally, Blackstone in August 2013.
Perry, who led negotiations for Strategic Partners, alongside Stephen Can, his then cohead and a founding partner, described the union with Blackstone as “aspirational.”
Under his leadership, the firm has grown from 27 professionals managing $9 billion in assets to 141 people managing $87 billion in assets.
“Over the last 24 years, we believe that my team has done more secondary deals than anyone else,” Perry said. “More than 2,200 deals, or one deal every three business days, on average.”
When Perry started, deals could be as small as $100,000. Now they could range from $1 million to over $5 billion.
“We recently completed what we believe to be the largest secondaries deal in history,” Perry said, referencing Strategic Partners’ $5.0 billion purchase of private equity funds from a major pension fund, which a person with knowledge of the matter said involved New York City’s nearly $300 billion pension for teachers, police officers, and other city workers.
“It was $5 billion across over 100 underlying funds, with over 70 general partners and over 750 underlying companies,” he said. “We had a matter of weeks to value that portfolio.”
While the team has deep expertise in LP-led transactions, it has since expanded into GP-led deals, as well as real estate and infrastructure secondaries — each supported by dedicated funds. Perry has played a key role in that evolution, helping bring the secondaries market into the broader investment mainstream.
“I am one of the spokespeople for this market and have helped to put a face and a philosophy on what it is that we do,” Perry said.
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