FORTUNE — Private equity firm Marlin Equity Partners has quietly made a major hire: Ryan Wald, who has spent the past 15 years as a managing director and member of the investment committee at Gores Group.
No comment yet from Marlin, which still hasn’t added Wald to its website. But one of the firm’s investors expects that Wald will be charged with leading a new small-cap investing practice at Marlin, a mid-market firm that last year raised $1.6 billion for its fourth fund. Such a strategy actually would ape Gores Group, which raised $300 million for a small-cap fund in 2011. It is unclear how much Marlin plans to raise for small-cap deals.
Both Marlin and Gores are based in Los Angeles.
Some of Wald’s more recent deals at Gores include Pep Boys and Harris Broadcasting.
Sign up for Dan Primack’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com