By Lars Mucklejohn and Sebastian McCarthy

DC Advisory has seen its European private equity secondaries team unravel in the latest sign of retrenchment in the market.

The three managing directors in the Japanese investment bank's European GP secondaries unit have left during the last year, most recently Sabina Sammartino, according to regulatory filings.

DC Advisory had viewed secondaries as a key potential growth area and hired Sammartino in April 2023 to bolster its efforts. Sammartino previously spent eight years at Mercury Capital Advisors, where she led the advisory firm and placement agent's secondaries practice.

Her appointment at DC Advisory came shortly after it added London-based Michael Wieczorek and Paris-based Ludovic Douge as managing directors.

Both Douge and Wieczorek exited the bank last year, Secondaries Investor first reported, with Wieczorek joining UBS in October.

DC Advisory is the latest bank to pull back from the secondaries space. Investec recently shuttered its GP-led advisory business less than three years after launch, Private Equity News reported, following a string of senior departures at its London office.

Once a niche market, secondaries -- the buying and selling of pre-existing investor commitments to private market funds -- has grown in demand as buyout shops and their limited partners increasingly take a more active approach to managing their portfolio and their liquidity.

Advising on such deals has become more competitive in recent years as a swath of boutique banks and placement agents seek to capitalize on the secondaries boom through senior hires and M&A.

GP-led secondaries largely comprise continuation vehicles, a way for private-equity firms to sell their assets to newer funds they also manage, which have proven popular as buyout shops struggle to exit investments amid dealmaking uncertainty.

Global secondaries deal volumes hit an estimated $233 billion last year, up 53% from 2024, according to Lazard.

DC Advisory declined to comment.

-- Lars Mucklejohn and Sebastian McCarthy write for Private Equity News, a unit of WSJ Pro publisher Dow Jones.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 15, 2026 12:36 ET (16:36 GMT)

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