Succession in private equity

Take, for example, Ashish Dhawan's retirement from ChrysCapital and the private equity industry. Having spent more than a decade building ChrysCapital into India's biggest private equity firm, Dhawan will focus his substantial abilities in the field of philanthropy, particularly in the area of K-12 education. Succession for such an icon does not come easy as his duties are carefully distributed amongst six longtime Managing Directors. Even at that, the whole process will take 18 months.

Last weekend, I received news that HarbourVest Partners will announce a transition of its Asian management team and in particular longtime Managing Director for Asia, Philip Bilden, who will be less involved with the firm as of 2012. Unlike Ashish, Philip will remain with HarbourVest in a Senior Advisor role, where he will help HarbourVest maintain senior level relationships with general partners, investors, and LP advisory boards in the region. This is a common practice with the tight-knit HarbourVest team, where former senior managing directors Ed Kane and Kelvin Delbridge also hold such positions.

Like Ashish, Philip does plan to spend more time on personal pursuits. He first moved to Asia in 1996 (when HarbourVest was still Hancock Venture Partners) and has built the HarbourVest brand and team to its current market-leading status. I can still clearly remember my first visit to the HarbourVest offices in Hong Kong, and Philip explaining how the look was modeled after the Boston offices. Today, the office still looks similar but much bigger.

Heading the office starting next year will be Sebastiaan van den Berg, who has been recently promoted to Managing Director. Sebastiaan joined HarbourVest in 2005, and has been in Asia for more than a decade. Beside van den Berg, HarbourVest's other Asian Managing Director is Tatsuya Kubo, who joined the firm in 2010 and works from the firm's Tokyo office, where he focuses on building and enhancing relationships with institutional investors and general partners in Japan. In addition, the Asia team will be further strengthened through two additional Managing Directors and a Vice President, who are expected to relocate from Boston and London in the third quarter of this year.

While goodbyes are never an easy thing to do, especially for old friends that have helped bring the industry to where it is today. As we all know, it is a fact of life and we shall see a bit more in the coming years. For the industry's future, we urge GPs facing succession issues to take the time to plan carefully and make it as seamless as possible. Philip and Ashish's well planned approach are the golden standard.

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• Topics
• People
• GPs
• Philip M. Bilden
• HarbourVest Partners
• Ashish Dhawan
• ChrysCapital Management