Continued expansion of the firm’s Venture Growth Evergreen platform
Wellington Management (“Wellington”), one of the world’s largest independent investment management firms with over US$1.3 trillion1 AUM, today announced the appointment of Alex Behm, as Head of Secondaries, Venture Growth Evergreen, Private Investing, as the firm continues to build out its evergreen platform.
Alex will oversee the development and management of the secondary investment capabilities for the firm’s Venture Growth Evergreen platform, working alongside the firm’s established direct private investment platform. The evergreen private investing platform seeks to provide enhanced liquidity, vintage-year diversification, and access to high-quality assets. This includes sourcing and executing secondary transactions, such as direct, GP-led, and LP-led secondaries, to complement the platform’s direct venture and growth investments. Alex will work closely with Mike Trihy who joined the firm to lead the expansion of Wellington’s evergreen private investing platform.
Alex has over 11 years of experience in secondaries investing and previously worked at Hamilton Lane as a Deal Lead on the Secondaries team. His responsibilities included sourcing deal flow and negotiating transactions across general partners, limited partners, and brokers. Earlier, Alex worked at Butcher’s Hill Capital as an analyst.
The maturation of the secondaries market, particularly within the late-stage venture and growth sectors where companies are staying private for longer, has introduced new investment strategies within a private markets portfolio. Secondary transactions have therefore become an important potential liquidity lever, with activity on track to exceed US $210 billion in 2025.2 The addition of secondaries will aim to provide Wellington’s Venture Growth Evergreen platform the potential for enhanced diversification from an investment and liquidity perspective.
Commenting on the appointment, Michelle L. Hunter, Director, Private Investments, Wellington Management, said: “Our evergreen platform seeks to design investment solutions to provide ongoing access to the private markets with thoughtful portfolio construction and measured liquidity features. We expect that the evergreen market AUM will grow over 50% in the next five years,3 due to demand from the wealth audience, so Alex’s background in sourcing and structuring complex secondaries transactions will help us broaden that access while maintaining our high standards around diligence and governance.”
The Wellington Venture Growth Evergreen platform will seek to offer investment strategies that provide immediate exposure to diversified portfolios of venture and growth-stage businesses across technology, consumer, healthcare, biotech, financial, and other sectors. The platform will leverage Wellington’s established Private Investing platform, global scale, deep sector expertise, and integrated research platform.
Wellington’s Private Investing platform manages more than US$10.1 billion in assets and invests globally across venture capital, private credit, and private real estate in multiple stages and has made over 300 investments across nine sector-focused areas.i
