Pantheon has closed its largest-ever secondaries fund on $3.25 billion, $1.25 billion above its target.
Its flagship Global Secondaries Fund VII is the fifth largest secondaries fund to close this year and the second largest from a Europe-headquartered fund.
The private equity-focused fund, which will invest in both traditional LP stake secondaries and GP-led secondaries transactions, attracted commitments from institutional investors as well as what Pantheon describes as “significant inflows” from private wealth clients.
In recent months the firm has stepped up expansion of its private wealth business. It opened offices in Geneva and Singapore specifically to target such clients and recently launched its Global Private Equity Fund, an evergreen fund open to private investors and institutional clients.
Forty-nine secondaries funds have closed so far this year, collectively raising around $73 billion. Although this is less than half the number closed last year, capital raised this year has already surpassed 2022’s total. This suggests that secondaries fundraising is following the same trend as the wider markets: A smaller number of big funds are attracting a larger share of capital.
With IPOs and M&A subdued, both LPs and GPs have been turning to secondaries transactions as a means to generate liquidity.
“Difficult market conditions and drops in public market valuations in 2022 left many investors simultaneously not receiving distributions and overallocated to private markets,” said PitchBook analyst Juliet Clemens in a recent analyst note on secondaries funds.
“The stalled exit environment left the secondary market as one of the only viable routes to liquidity for LPs.”
Featured image by Shomos uddin/Getty Images
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