Investment bank Piper Sandler has launched a private markets trading function, appointing three managing directors for the business line.
Patrick Gordon, Kyle Mooney and David Ilishah join the bank from private marketplace Forge Global. Gordon and Mooney are co-heads of the division.
Reporting to Tom O’Kane and Mike Cox, co-heads of global equities, they will focus on trading equity shares of private companies.
Piper Sandler reported US$479 million in net revenues for Q3 2025, up 33% year-on-year.
Deb Schoneman, Piper Sandler president, commented, “As companies stay private for longer, demand for trading in private shares has grown significantly. [The appointments] will expand opportunities we can offer our clients to invest in high-growth private businesses or to monetise illiquid positions before they go public.”
Gordon spent close to five years at Forge as a director and senior director of capital markets, before which he was part of the equity research product management and institutional equity sales and trading teams at William Blair.
Mooney’s decade of industry experience includes more than four years at Forge, where he was most recently a managing director. Prior to this he was a director at SharesPost, acquired by Forge Global in 2020. Earlier in his career, Mooney was a senior associate at AllianceBernstein.
Ilishah spent more than seven years at Forge, becoming senior director of private capital markets at the start of this year. Prior to this, he was a fund controller at private equity and VC vendor Standish Management.
