Houlihan Lokey contrata ex-Patria para vertical de capital solutions

Houlihan Lokey, a U.S. investment bank known for mergers and acquisitions and debt restructuring, has hired Mayra Fregonesi, a former executive from Patria, to create a capital solutions vertical in Brazil. Mayra's role will be to seek capital for the bank's transactions and connect Brazilian family offices and private equity/fund of funds with their international peers and companies to provide liquidity.

With closed IPO markets and selective follow-ons, and a low appetite for venture capital and private equity managers, Mayra estimates that around US$20 billion in investments are sitting in the portfolios of funds and family offices looking for some form of liquidity. The Distribution to Paid-In Ratio (DPR) - which indicates how much of the capital contributed by investors has already returned through distributions - is "the new TIR" (Internal Rate of Return), she told Brazil Journal.

"My job is to connect those players with each other and the global platform of the bank to get the business flowing. Much more people are now reaching out to me. It wasn't like that before."

Mayra spent six years at Patria, where she was responsible for fundraising and ROI, before joining GP Investments, where she held the same role from 2007 to 2019. The hiring marks a new phase for Houlihan Lokey in Brazil. According to Bruno Baratta, the head of operations in Brazil, the goal is to expand the bank's involvement in M&As, capital solutions, and financial advisory services, and to rely less on company restructuring, which currently accounts for two-thirds of their business here.

Since Bruno set up the office in São Paulo in 2023, Houlihan Lokey has participated in 23 out of the 27 debt restructuring deals that involved cross-border debt - such as those of InterCement, Unigel, Ambipar, and Braskem. "It was natural that there would be an initial focus on this market given the state of the economy, but now the trend is for us to move closer to how the bank operates abroad, where two-thirds of our revenue comes from areas like M&As, financial advisory services, and capital solutions," he said.