Alts shop brings in Nuveen Investments executive

FWR Staff

16 October 2008

Coast recruits Tim Holmes as institutional marketing head for North America. Sausalito, Calif.-based alternatives firm Coast Asset Management has hired former Nuveen Investments executive Timothy Holmes as a managing director in charge of its institutional marketing in North America. Coast has also made Michael Welch, who joined the firm from Lazard Asset Management in 2003, a managing-director and head of its North American intermediary marketing.

Holmes and Welch report to Coast's COO Roger Hartley. Welch will continue in his role as liaison to Coast's distribution partners.

Institutional expansion

"In these times of extraordinary financial stress, Coast offers proven investment and risk-management processes and a long record of innovation and expertise," says Hartley. "Tim and Mike will be instrumental in continuing to provide quality services to our existing and future clients as we expand our focus on institutional investors, intermediaries and investment advisers."

At Chicago-based Nuveen, Holmes helped develop and raise assets for strategies such as multi-strategy global, currency and credit. Earlier in his career, he was managing member and COO of Ascendant Capital Partners, a Berwyn, Pa.-based fund of hedge funds.

At Lazard, Welch was a v.p. responsible for sales, client service and marketing to financial intermediaries.

Management-owned Coast has capital backing from summitpartners.com Boston-based Summit Partners -- a private-equity firm that also invests in RIA aggregator Focus Financial Partners.

Coast manages $5 billion for high-net-worth and institutional investors in its core multi-manager fund-of-hedge-fund portfolios and in complementary strategies like fixed-income arbitrage and structured products. -FWR

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