Ardian raises largest ever global secondaries fund

The total eclipses the $8 billion raised by the firm for its fifth secondaries fund, which closed in June 2012. It is also the largest secondaries pool of capital ever accumulated for secondary investments, although Lexington Partners - which is currently marketing its eighth fund - may ultimately take top spot.

Ardian announced last October that it had deployed $4.3 billion across 21 secondary transactions since September 2012. Deals completed during the period include the purchase of 53 LP interests worth $580 million from a European pension fund and 46 cherry-picked asses worth $663 million from the global portfolio of a US financial institution.

Ardian estimated the potential stock of LP interests for sale over the next five years will remain significant and exceed dry powder for secondary transactions.

While financial institutions divesting portfolios for regulatory reasons are likely to remain an important source of deal flow, the market is becoming increasingly diversified as pension funds, endowments and insurance companies rebalance their portfolios on a year-to-year basis. In this context, global deal flow is no longer dominated by heavily discounted sales of underperforming funds.

Lexington, for its part, projects an average industry-wide deal volume of $25 billion per year, or more than $100 billion over the next 4-5 years. This doesn't include direct secondary transactions, which are said to be running at $2-3 billion a year.

Last week Pomona Capital reached a final close of $1.75 billion on its eighth global secondaries fund, while Auda International raised $332 million for its third secondaries fund in January.

HarbourVest Partners, Hamilton Lane, AlpInvest Partners and Portfolio Advisors have also successfully raised secondaries vehicles since last summer.

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• Topics
• Fundraising
• Secondaries
• Secondaries
• Ardian
• AXA Private Equity Asia
• Secondaries
• Fundraising