H.I.G. Capital Moves into Secondaries — and What the Bet Reveals About Its Founder’s Playbook
Sami Mnaymneh has never been in a rush to follow the crowd. When he co-founded H.I.G. Capital in Miami in 1993, buyout firms of any real scale were gravitating toward large-cap transactions. Mnaymneh built H.I.G. in the opposite direction, targeting mid-sized companies that bigger funds routinely passed over. Three decades later, that same contrarian instinct appears to be driving one of the firm’s most consequential expansions yet.
H.I.G. is entering the GP-led secondaries market, a corner of private equity that has grown considerably as elevated interest rates have choked off the traditional paths to exit — IPOs and strategic M&A — that buyout firms have long relied upon. Continuation vehicles, which allow sponsors to transfer a high-performing asset from a maturing fund into a new structure, have become one of the few reliable ways to return capital to investors without selling outright. H.I.G. is now positioning itself on both sides of that trade.
The Team Behind Sami Mnaymneh’s Secondaries Push
To lead the effort, H.I.G. recruited a four-person team from Morgan Stanley’s private equity secondaries unit. Dan Wieder, who joins as managing director, will lead the new GP Solutions Platform alongside Yash Gupta, also a managing director, and two principals, Austin Gerber and Joe Holleran. Together, the group brings what H.I.G. describes as nearly five decades of collective experience in secondaries investing.
The hire came alongside a fundraising target that signals the firm’s ambitions. H.I.G. is seeking to raise $1.5 billion for a vehicle that will back other private equity firms’ single-asset continuation funds, with plans to deploy at least $50 million into roughly 20 such vehicles, each focused on middle-market companies. H.I.G. already maintains relationships with more than 800 private equity managers — a network that gives it unusual sourcing depth for a strategy that depends heavily on deal flow and trust.
“We are thrilled to welcome Dan and this seasoned team to H.I.G.,” said Rick Rosen, co-president of H.I.G. Capital. “Their collective expertise, proven investment acumen, and entrepreneurial mindset are highly complementary to our platform. We believe our secondaries effort will be an exciting and scalable business over the coming years.”
A Pattern of Expanding Without Drifting
What stands out about H.I.G.’s move into secondaries is how consistently it fits with the firm’s stated philosophy under Mnaymneh. Every major expansion — credit, infrastructure, real estate, growth equity — has been positioned as a deepening of the middle-market focus rather than a departure from it. Secondaries, in H.I.G.’s framing, extend the same logic: provide flexible capital solutions to sponsors and companies that larger, less specialized players are not well-suited to serve.
Continuation fund activity has expanded sharply. According to Jefferies, GP-led exits accounted for nearly a fifth of all private equity exits in the first half of 2025, up from 13 percent for all of the prior year — a structural shift that firms like H.I.G. are now actively trying to capture. Mnaymneh’s firm already oversaw $70 billion in assets before this latest initiative, spanning seven distinct investment strategies and 19 offices worldwide.
H.I.G. has not publicly addressed the fundraising plans or the timeline for the fund’s formal launch. But the pattern is clear enough: Mnaymneh built this firm by identifying underserved corners of the market before they attracted wide attention, and the secondaries push fits that template precisely. Whether the timing proves as well-judged as past expansions will become apparent once the fund is formally in market and deploying capital.
What is not in doubt is that the firm Mnaymneh has led for more than 30 years continues to press forward. Its credit affiliate, H.I.G. WhiteHorse, recently closed its fourth middle-market lending fund at $5.9 billion, drawing from a global investor base that spans sovereign wealth funds, pensions, endowments, and family offices. The secondaries platform, if successful, would add yet another lane to a firm that has proven adept at building new businesses without losing its original focus.