About four years ago, Josef Menasche was working at a boutique secondaries firm on a deal alongside Goldman Sachs bankers. He came away convinced that his industry, which deals in sales of private fund stakes, was headed for change.
So he called Goldman and said, “Hey, you should just hire me because we already had a great working dynamic on this deal. Wouldn’t it be better if we were actually working together?”
He joined the bank’s secondaries business at the end of 2021 and today is a managing director and global cohead of secondaries advisory. He said 2025 has been a turning point, following several years of caution among investors regarding capital commitments. “The level of creativity that we’ve seen in 2025 has been really, really exciting to work with,” he said — a sign that the market is picking up.
His team has executed transactions across infrastructure, real estate, private equity, and venture capital. The highlights include a $3.1 billion single-asset continuation vehicle — allowing a private equity firm to extend its investment in a company — with New Mountain Capital for Real Chemistry.
“Half of it was providing the distribution to original investors, half was actually primary capital for future M&A, which is pretty unusual,” he said. “The fact that they’re willing to put so much fresh money into the new M&A through another business is pretty unusual. It’s a general sign of people feeling good about the world.”
Menasche studied chemistry at Cambridge. He found the lab environment too slow and shifted into finance. Early experience at secondaries-focused boutique Campbell Lutyens gave him a foothold in the industry.
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