LGT Capital Partners unveils private equity vehicle

LGT Capital Partners has launched a new semi-liquid fund for wholesale investors across Australia and New Zealand.

According to the global alternatives specialist, the fund enables wholesale investors to access a globally diversified private equity portfolio of secondaries and co-investments focused on buyout opportunities.

The vehicle has been constructed over the past two years and now has more than 850 underlying portfolio companies, after it invested following recent private equity market peaks.

With nearly $1.6 billion raised globally, the Australian feeder fund was seeded with $105 million from an Australian institutional investor and is currently available on the Netwealth platform.

The new strategy extends LGT Capital Partners’ range of semi-liquid solutions, with the 
company managing more than US$70 billion in private equity. The firm has a global team of over 350 private equity professionals and 15 offices across Europe, the US and Asia.

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Nathan Pensabene, principal at LGT Capital Partners, said the announcement follows the launch of its semi-liquid multi-alternatives fund for Australian and New Zealand investors in 2021.

“We are pleased to be able to offer our private equity platform to a wider range of clients through a semi-liquid fund structure. We see growing demand for more flexible private equity investment solutions and have launched the new fund to improve the accessibility of the asset class to potential investors,” he unpacked.

Pauline Wetter, fellow partner at LGT Capital Partners, added that the investment firm currently sees a range of opportunities to invest in private equity.

She said: “Our new semi-liquid strategy provides access to a global set of high-quality opportunities in secondaries and co-investments. These are sourced from our extensive network of managers that we have built over more than 25 years and are carefully selected by our strong team to create a broadly diversified, global portfolio.”

LGT Capital Partners, headquartered in Switzerland, has over US$100 billion in assets under management and services more than 700 institutional clients across 44 countries.

Money Management recently explored why fund managers are looking to semi-liquid vehicles as a way to reach retail investors who may be nervous about the liquidity of the ever-growing private markets asset class.

These products offer greater flexibility by being open-ended, diversified and provide ongoing access which allows for more frequent redemptions by investors and the ability to exit if economic conditions change. They also allow investments of smaller ticket sizes which are more suited to a retail market rather than the large sums invested by institutional players.

A number of financial advisers have welcomed the introduction of more semi-liquid or evergreen products to the market by fund managers to mitigate the typical problems with alternatives.

For example, Roger Perrett, financial adviser at FreshWater Wealth, said he believes his clients should hold exposure to private markets but flagged concerns around rebalancing portfolios, withdrawing funds, timing market access, and the lack of liquidity.

“I believe it is important for clients to have exposure to the private market’s asset class and the lack of liquidity can create real issues when withdrawing funds,” he told Money Management.

“I believe having semi-liquid vehicles is very appealing and I would use the asset class more if there was greater liquidity as these above-mentioned issues would then potentially reduce.”