Eric Foran
Partner
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- Full Name
- Eric Foran
- Title
- Partner, Investment
- Firm
- Coller Capital
- Firm Type
- Private equity / private credit secondaries specialist (institutional secondaries fund manager — *not* an angel investor; the "Angel Investors / Seed Round" labels in the source data appear to be an aggregator error)
- Investment Stage
- Secondary market transactions — LP portfolio purchases and GP-led secondaries (continuation funds, single-asset and multi-asset deals). Coller invests in mature private equity fund interests and companies, not seed-stage startups.
- Target Company Profile
- Existing private equity and private credit fund interests, portfolios of private companies, and other illiquid private-market assets acquired from LPs and GPs seeking liquidity
- Sector Focus
- Diversified across private equity and private credit; sector-agnostic at the underlying-company level
- Geographic Focus
- Global, with Foran focused on North American origination and execution
- Location
- New York, NY, USA
Background
Eric Foran is a Partner in Coller Capital's Investment team, based in the firm's New York office, where he is responsible for the origination and execution of secondary investments. Coller Capital, founded by Jeremy Coller in 1990, is one of the world's largest dedicated private-market secondaries investors, with roughly US$50 billion in assets under management, interests in more than 850 private equity funds and around 8,000 underlying companies, and about 77 investment professionals across 11 offices.
Foran joined Coller Capital in 2010. Prior to that he worked in the Investment Management Division at Lehman Brothers in San Francisco, and earlier in the Global Advisor Research and Institutional Consulting groups at Morgan Stanley in New York. His career has centered on institutional investment management and, for the past 15 years, on the private-capital secondary market rather than on venture or angel investing.
He holds a BS in Finance from the University of Tennessee and an MBA from London Business School, and he is a CFA Charterholder. He is frequently cited as one of Coller's spokespeople on secondary-market trends, particularly around GP-led transactions and market-volume forecasts.
In January 2026, Coller Capital agreed to combine with Swedish private-markets group EQT in a deal valuing the firm at approximately US$3.2 billion; post-close, Coller is expected to operate as "Coller EQT," a new secondaries business segment within EQT, with the transaction targeted to complete in Q3 2026. This transition is the most material recent development affecting Foran's platform.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Invests through Coller's institutional secondaries funds, providing liquidity to LPs and GPs in the private markets — buying existing fund stakes and company portfolios rather than making primary or early-stage investments.
- Focus spans both LP-led secondaries (acquiring limited-partner fund interests) and GP-led secondaries (continuation vehicles, single- and multi-asset transactions); Foran has publicly analyzed the largest GP-led deals in the market.
- Executes some of the largest and most complex transactions in the secondaries market, leveraging Coller's scale as a specialist that has focused entirely on secondaries for 35 years.
- Bullish on secondary-market growth: Foran publicly forecast roughly US$130 billion in global secondary transaction volume for 2024 and has framed secondaries as an important portfolio diversifier and liquidity tool for private-market investors.
- Underwriting emphasis is on mature, cash-generative private-market assets with visible track records — the opposite of seed-stage risk profiles.
Notable Investments
- GP-led secondaries (2023): Foran authored/presented a public breakdown of the ten largest GP-led secondary transactions of 2023, reflecting his direct coverage of that deal segment.
- Coller Capital secondaries platform: The firm has raised multi-billion-dollar secondaries funds (including a US$17 billion global private equity secondaries platform), the vehicles through which Foran's origination and execution work is deployed.
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