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The HarbourVest London Team

Valérie Handal

Managing Director

London

About Valérie

Valérie Handal focuses on secondary investments, primarily in Europe. She joined HarbourVest in 2006 and has played a lead role in a range of transactions, including multiple GP-led deals. Valérie currently serves on the advisory boards of funds managed by Astorg, CapVest, Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners, Mandarin Capital, PAI Partners and Pollen Street Capital, among others.

Valérie joined HarbourVest from Merrill Lynch’s Private Equity Group in London, where she was a vice president. Her prior experience includes positions in investment banking and venture capital at Merrill Lynch, Banc of America Securities, and Softbank Europe Ventures.

Valérie received a BSc (honors) degree in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is a native French speaker and also speaks Spanish.

Continuation solutions encompass a host of transaction types in which a GP secures interim liquidity and/or additional primary capital for their LPs in a strongly performing asset, or set of assets, that the GP will continue to own and control. Specifically, they include continuation funds, new funds created by GPs for the purpose of acquiring the asset(s) that continue to be managed by the same GP and capitalized by one or several secondary buyers, or equity recapitalizations involving a direct equity or structured equity investment into a portfolio company. These transactions can also include a parallel investment from the GP’s latest fund into that same pool of assets (a “cross-fund trade”).