Paul Hastings has hired former Ropes & Gray partner Amanda Persaud in New York to help lead its investment funds and private capital practice.
Persaud advises asset managers on raising and structuring funds in a variety of industries and asset classes. Her clients have included Apollo Global Management, Blackstone Inc., Fortress Investment Group, Francisco Partners, Morgan Stanley Capital Partners, and others, Paul Hastings said in a news release.
Persaud is the sixth partner to join Paul Hastings’ funds practice this year. The firm is looking to crack an elite group with a tight grip on the business of raising capital for asset management firms.
Paul Hastings’ group has been making progress, increasing revenue by 70% since the start of 2023, the firm said. Presaud was attracted to that growth and the group’s commitment to “excellence,” she said in an interview.
“It’s really impressive to see how they have methodically gone about bringing in the best and brightest from the market at other firms and set strategic goals for themselves and then exceeded those goals,” Persaud said. “To be able to grow revenue 70%, it means you are providing excellent service across the board.”
The private funds practice is widely seen as a key building block for broader relationships with asset managers. Nearly half of Paul Hastings’ 150 largest clients are now asset managers, Frank Lopez, the firm’s chairman, said in an interview. He called Persaud “one of the top practitioners of her generation.”
“From a strategic perspective, we want to have as many touchpoints with asset managers as we can,” Lopez said. “And funds is as important as any of the practices touching asset managers, because it’s so important to their C-suite. And if you’re doing both the transactions and the funds work, there is a way to be more strategic about how you advise your clients.”
Persaud has been a partner at Ropes & Gray for nearly a decade after working at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett earlier in her career.
She has seen her clients evolve from traditional private equity buyout funds to multi-asset, multi-strategy investment firms. Her clients now raise credit funds, real estate funds, and build capital pools to purchase existing private assets, known as secondaries or continuation funds.
New strategies often developed after periods of stress, she said, such as the rise of private credit following the Great Financial Crisis. Now, private credit is facing challenges as some funds face requests for redemptions above the amount they agreed to return in any given period.
“This is a time where you see a lot of intellectual firepower coming into play to help our managers think more creatively about how to solve some of those problems,” she said.
To contact the reporter on this story:
To contact the editor responsible for this story: