(Bloomberg) -- Ducera Partners hired John Vaske, Temasek Holdings Pte’s former head of Americas and a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner, as vice chairman, partner and co-head of mergers and acquisitions.
Vaske’s appointment comes as the firm, best known for providing restructuring advice, seeks to increase its revenues from what executives called “healthy company” M&A.
Ducera, founded in 2015, has been making forays into traditional dealmaking, including advising on Monsanto’s $56 billion sale to Bayer AG. The company led by Chief Executive Officer Michael Kramer has largely advised private firms, but is increasingly aiming to work with public companies, according to Chris Grubb, co-head of M&A.
“We’re going to build out a broad team, but we aren’t going to hire with an eye toward populating every vertical,” Vaske said in an interview. He, like all Ducera’s partners, has an equity stake in the firm.
Ducera has a deep bench of senior restructuring bankers that compete against rivals at boutique investment banks like PJT Partners Inc. and Perella Weinberg Partners. It has ambitions for its M&A business to “be at the same level,” said Pat Dowling, the firm’s chief operating officer.
Ducera has provided restructuring advice to companies including Yellow Corp., Pluralsight and Diebold Nixdorf.
Vaske was most recently CEO of Farmers Business Network Inc., which counts Temasek among its investors. He joined Temasek — the Singapore state-owned investment firm — in 2017 and left in 2023. Vaske was co-chairman of global mergers and acquisitions at Goldman before he left in 2016.
While at Goldman, Vaske advised on transactions including BP’s sale of Innovene to Ineos, Norsk Hydro’s sale of oil and gas operations to Statoil, and Sherwin-Williams’ acquisition of Valspar.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
