Harold Siegel has joined Highland Capital Management as a managing director, where he will team up with the firm's other new recruit Jack Yang, who joined two weeks ago. Siegel worked with Yang at Merrill Lynch and prior to that they both worked for Chemical Banking Corp. Siegel said his new role at Highland will be in a fundraising capacity. He will focus on growing the firm's asset management business and its institutional capital raising initiatives, according to a statement from Highland.
One loan player commented that Siegel has a strong background in sales to institutional clients. Siegel was a managing director within the leverage finance group of global debt markets at Merrill, responsible for loan syndication and sales. Yang left Merrill in June last year and Siegel left the firm a few months later in October (LMW, 10/23). Siegel was not working in the interim.
Highland is the world's second largest leveraged loan asset management firm. Yang, the ex-global head of leveraged finance products at Merrill, joined as a partner in charge of business development (7/21). Yang is heading Dallas-based Highland's recently established New York office, where he will focus on growing the business through potential acquisitions of asset management firms and new products.