Partners Group on Thursday flagged more withdrawal requests and is expected to cap a second major investment pool, according to people familiar with the matter, a day after its shares plunged on news it had capped a key fund.
Partners Group said it expects a slowdown in fundraising in the second half of 2026 and into 2027; the firm’s shares rose by 4% in morning trading after a record slide on Wednesday.
The Swiss asset manager said repurchase requests at a $16 billion Delaware-based fund had reached 6% of assets held, exceeding the 5% limit it allows each quarter.
This means withdrawals would be capped, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The company will use caps to protect investors who remain invested in funds, said one of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
INDUSTRY-WIDE VOLATILITY AFFECTING FUNDS
The middle-market alternative asset manager, which oversees about $185 billion, said it was being affected by industry-wide volatility across open-ended evergreen funds starting from private credit and spilling into private equity.
The exact value of the repurchase requests as well as the exact amount that will be repurchased will be finalised by the end of July, Partners Group said.
On Wednesday, the firm said it had limited withdrawals from its $8.6 billion private equity fund after redemption requests at the Luxembourg-based Partners Group Global Value SICAV reached 9.8% of the assets held.
Three other mature evergreen funds, with a total fund size of $9.7 billion, mainly from institutional investors, are estimated to see redemptions between 3.5% and 5%, Partners Group said on Thursday.
The rush to withdraw money from the funds came weeks after a report by short seller Grizzly Research alleged that Partners had overvalued its investments in certain companies.
Partners Group countered that its valuations are robust but earlier this week, its CEO – in an interview with Bloomberg TV – conceded that the report had created “uncertainty” which led to some of the withdrawals.
KNOCK-ON EFFECT ON PEERS
Partners Group’s situation is the first major instance of a private equity firm being sucked into a wider trend of investors pulling money out of funds; first in property as interest rates rose; and then private credit, where non-banks lend to companies.
Some privately run funds try to contain selloffs by capping demands from investors to exit, buying them time to find cash.
The slump in the Partners Group shares fed through to peers in Europe on Wednesday, including Sweden’s EQT, CVC Capital Partners and Bridgepoint Group. In the U.S., shares of asset managers Blackstone, KKR, TPG and Ares Management also fell.
On Thursday, Partners Group reaffirmed its expected gross new client demand of $26 billion to $32 billion for 2026, supported by “a large and visible pipeline of fundraising opportunities across mandates, evergreens and traditional closed-ended programmes.”
The confirmation helped its shares recover somewhat after falling 16% to a six-year low on Wednesday.
The company said it expected its fundraising to exceed outflows in the first half of 2026, but there could be a slowdown in the second half, a trend that is expected to continue into next year.
“For H2 2026, the firm expects that overall net assets under management growth could be slowed by the evergreen platform by 1% to 2%, with a similar effect expected for net overall AUM growth for the full year 2027,” Partners Group said.
Reuters
