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Joe Slevin

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When Joe Slevin started specializing in the resale market of private equity stakes in 2015, it was a niche that "barely existed." A decade later, secondary transactions hit a record $103 billion in the first half of 2025, and Slevin — as a co-founder of Jefferies' Private Capital Advisory team — has been building the infrastructure for this market's growth from the ground up. The UK native started his career as a JPMorgan investment banker in London, then deliberately chose "an area of finance where there was huge growth potential" that was "off the beaten path." He joined Coller Capital, a pioneer in secondaries, spending three years on the buy side before returning to banking at PJT Partners and Guggenheim. His buy-side experience, he says, made him a better advisor because he had to bring "extremely nuanced" deals through investment committees and could speak the language of both sides. In 2021, Slevin co-founded Jefferies' Private Capital Advisory team. It has since grown to 120+ members and advised on over $31 billion in secondary transactions in the first half of 2025 alone. He focuses on continuation funds — vehicles set up by PE firms to buy assets they already own, giving liquidity to investors who need it while continuing to generate returns from strong-performing companies. Slevin's recent move from New York to Los Angeles reflects a strategic bet: expanding Jefferies' reach to West Coast private equity and venture capital operators, who have been underserved by East Coast-centric advisory firms. It's a contrarian move in an industry where most senior bankers gravitate toward Manhattan, and it positions Slevin to capture deal flow from Silicon Valley's massive PE and VC ecosystem. "I fundamentally think if you just pick what you're interested in, you will do well," Slevin has said. His interest in secondaries — an esoteric, structurally complex, and rapidly growing corner of private markets — has proven prophetic. With limited public presence beyond the BI feature, Slevin is a market builder whose work has directly enabled the growth of one of the most important segments in alternative investments.

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