Leading sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf region are actively building out dedicated secondaries capabilities: distinct investment functions with their own teams and their own capital (as opposed to purely relying on external managers).
At Laz Partners, we have been tracking this shift for some time, as it is a topic that has been increasingly coming up in candidate discussions.
Private credit allocations across MENA sovereign wealth funds grew more than fourfold between 2021 to 2025, to roughly $80bn. ADIA has around $24bn invested in private credit strategies, while an operational load that only specialist teams can carry.
Recent moves confirm the shift. In July, Mubadala completed the transfer of its credit business into Mubadala Capital, moving more than 25 investment professionals in house under Omar Eraiqat and Fabrizio Bocciardi and committing a further $4.65bn to a platform whose strategies include secondaries and NAV financing.
On the secondaries front specifically, Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC), the Abu Dhabi sovereign vehicle inside the Mubadala family, runs its own secondaries desk under Larbi Arfaoui and Athra Al Zaabi, active across private equity, infrastructure and credit secondaries: direct evidence of investment capability built in house rather than delegated to a manager.
What we are seeing across these sovereign wealth funds and their partners is hiring that is methodical but equally urgent. Teams want professionals who combine secondaries expertise with an appetite to operate across both internal decision-making and external manager relationships. The candidates landing these roles typically demonstrate technical depth alongside real curiosity about how capital allocation works at sovereign scale.
For hiring managers building these teams, the constraint is not capital. It is professionals who can understanding secondaries pricing, portfolio dynamics and exit value, while working inside the allocation process of a large asset owner. These are skill sets that rarely coexist.
For candidates with secondaries experience, timing matters. Gulf sovereigns are mostly hiring experienced professionals over junior analysts, with the priority on investors with a demonstrable transaction track record across LP-led and GP-led deals, and portfolio managers who can run a secondaries book once it is built.
