DWS taps Morgan Stanley for Americas head

Kumber Husain joins global head Mark McDonald and EMEA head Daniel Green as part of an ongoing secondaries rebuild.

DWS Group has added another key player to its secondaries team.

The group formerly known as Deutsche Asset Management has appointed Kumber Husain as head of private equity Americas, according to a statement. He will focus on the sourcing and execution of direct co-investment and private equity secondaries transactions.

Husain joins from Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners where he worked for four years and was an executive director. He also sat on the group’s private markets investment committee.

He will report to global head of private equity Mark McDonald, who joined from the secondaries advisory team at Credit Suisse in November last year.

McDonald was brought in to rebuild DWS’s secondaries capabilities after its existing team spun out to form Glendower Capital in August last year. Glendower took on the day-to-day management of DWS’s €2 billion of assets, with DWS remaining the regulated manager with ultimate responsibility for the portfolio.

In January, Daniel Green moved from Meketa Investment Group to become DWS’s EMEA head of private equity secondaries.

Speaking to sister publication Private Equity International, McDonald said that DWS’s secondaries operation would take its cues from the advisory world.

“What are the issues that you have as a partnership, the issues you are having with your underlying fund or LP base, and can we craft a solution that can be a win for LPs, portfolio companies, the fund and the buyer? We are going with that same mentality [that] only we have capital to pursue things.”

DWS’s private equity team had $2.6 billion in assets under management as of 30 September. It is part of the alternatives platform, which has $86 billion in assets, mainly across real estate and liquid real assets, according to its website.