Henry Robin Flees North Sea for Invesco: Updated

After a short stint at North Sea Capital, Henry Robin has left the firm to join Invesco, sources told peHUB.

Robin started at Invesco in late August. He is working on the fund-of-funds team at Invesco’s private capital group and is an MD, a person said. Invesco, an investment manager with $574 billion in assets under management, owns WL Ross & Co., Invesco Powershares and recently bought Morgan Stanley’s retail funds business (which includes Van Kampen).

In 2009, Robin joined North Sea Capital where he was a senior partner and head of the New York office. North Sea Capital is a PE advisor in Northern Europe.

Before North Sea, Robin was a founding partner of AlpInvest Partner’s New York office. Robin also held senior positions at Credit Suisse and the MacArthur Foundation.

UPDATE: Lauge Sletting, a North Sea managing partner, confirmed that Robin has left the firm after a year. North Sea had previously planned on expanding its platform in the U.S. by hiring more people and introducing fund-of-funds. But the financial crisis and increased regulation of the PE sector (including a requirement that PE firms, including funds-of-funds managers with offices in the U.S., register with the SEC) spurred North Sea to change those plans.

North Sea has instead decided to focus on fundraising in Europe only, Sletting says. “We will not be expanding the team over there as previously planned,” he says. The decision caused Robin, North Sea’s sole employee in New York, to leave the firm, Sletting says, and North Sea has no plans to replace him.

North Sea will look for PE investments in the U.S. out of its Copenhagen office and will monitor funds out of that office as well. “As we have done in the last nine years previously to Henry joining us,” Sletting says.

Robin, in a statement supplied by North Sea, says he regrets he had to make the decision but that his experience with North Sea was positive. “And while this is not the outcome either of us would have anticipated when we first agreed to work in partnership, we have agreed to maintain a positive working relationship into the future,” Robin says in the statement.