How liquid is semi-liquid?

Suppose two investors give notice to redeem their fund units, each in time for their fund’s cut-off. When it comes to redemptions, both funds carry the same label: once a quarter, capped at five percent of fund assets. One investor holds GAM LSA Private Shares and, according to the prospectus, has the money in their account after about 35 days. The other holds PATRIZIA Infrastructure Invest and waits up to 394 days, just under thirteen months.

Neither fund is doing anything unusual; both are following their prospectus. Almost all of the difference lies in a single term that rarely appears in comparison tables: the notice period. At GAM it is 25 days, at PATRIZIA twelve months.

Semi-liquid funds promise a middle way: investments in private equity, private credit or infrastructure that can nevertheless be exited at regular intervals. For 140 funds, semiliquid.info has examined exactly how that exit works; for 133 of them the prospectus or an equivalent document is available. The finding: the rules differ from fund to fund far more than the label suggests.

Four stages before the money arrives

Four stages lie between the decision to redeem and the money arriving: the wait for the next cut-off, the notice period up to the redemption date, the striking of the net asset value and the settlement period. Each is governed separately in the prospectus; the factsheet usually says little about them. Only their sum answers the question an investor actually asks.

For 117 of the 140 funds this chain can be assembled from the documents. An investor who needs money at some point in the redemption cycle waits 154 days on average, about five months; the median is 131 days. At the fast end it is 3 days, at the slow end 558, in both cases at an ELTIF registered for sale in Germany.

What stands out is who sits far to the right. ELTIFs registered for sale in Germany take a median of 162 days, the other funds 118. One reason is the notice period: its median is 90 days in the first group and 30 in the second.

What the label leaves out

Five percent a quarter: the figure has become the hallmark of semi-liquid funds. Of the 140 funds, 83 cap redemptions at five percent, and 71 of those also redeem quarterly. Within this group, which looks identical on paper, the notice period ranges from two business days to twelve months, and the wait, when notice is given on time, from 35 to 394 days.

An elevenfold difference under the same label.

Nor is the five percent itself the same everywhere. Five percent of what? The group’s prospectuses refer variously to the net asset value at the end of the previous quarter, to the value on the redemption date, or to an average over the previous months. And whether new subscriptions are netted off decides whether the cap bites early or, in a growing fund, practically never: 26 funds in the group measure gross, 28 net.

The cap is not the problem. The problem is that product comparisons treat the same percentage as the same feature, while the notice period, which makes the difference, rarely appears in them.

For new investors, the lock-up counts too

All of this applies to investors who already hold the fund and whose lock-up has expired. Anyone subscribing today asks a different question: how long am I tied in, at a minimum? One more factor then comes into play that has not mattered so far: the lock-up. The calculation uses the reading most favourable to the investor, in which notice is given during the lock-up and runs within it.

Just under half of the 96 funds for which this calculation can be made have no lock-up at all. Where there is one, it lasts a median of 24 months. Overall, the lock-up changes little: the median for these 96 funds rises from 136 to 143 days.

But the aggregate hides who is affected. Private credit stays at a median of 122 days. Infrastructure jumps from 165 to 424, because the lock-up is still running at 11 of its 18 funds.

And lock-ups expire. For ELTIFs registered for sale in Germany, the median from subscription stood at 226 days at the end of March and at 174 at the end of September, through the passage of time alone. A liquidity metric without a starting point and a reference date is therefore no metric at all.

Where the prospectuses fall silent

All these figures describe normal conditions: no cap bites, no redemptions are suspended. Under stress, what counts is what the prospectus says — and what is missing. For only 27 of the 133 funds analysed can the redemption mechanics be determined from the document without leaving a question open.

The most serious gap concerns not the level of a limit but its duration. A cap is provided for in 132 documents, and 113 of them specify no maximum duration. A full suspension is permitted in 129, in 115 of them without a time limit. Yet this is the question that counts under stress. A cap that bites for one quarter is liquidity management. One that bites for eight quarters comes close to closure.

Twelve quarters in a row

Experience shows that duration is not an academic question. For six of the 140 funds there is documentary evidence that redemptions were in fact restricted; four of those restrictions are ongoing, one of them because the fund is being liquidated. Partners Group Global Value has applied its quarterly limit since June 2026, in September for the second time running. At Greenman OPEN redemptions have been on hold entirely since December 2025; the fund is selling 14 properties to raise liquidity.

A look back shows how long this can last. At the Blackstone European Property Income Fund, redemption requests exceeded the limit in every single quarter from 2023 to 2025, twelve quarters in a row. None of this required a breach of the prospectus. It sets no maximum duration, so there was none to exceed.

Six documented cases do not prove that redemptions were never restricted at the other funds: the record covers only what is publicly documented, and not every fund has to report a restriction. The question that can be answered reliably is therefore not so much how often redemptions were restricted as what the documents promise and where they are silent.

Not a flaw in the system

Long waits and redemption caps are not a flaw in the system. They follow from what these funds hold: stakes in companies, loans and infrastructure cannot be turned into cash overnight. The lead time gives the manager room to plan liquidity and, under stress, enough time to obtain good prices for investors’ assets rather than sell under pressure. The cap, in turn, protects those who stay invested against dilution: those who leave first should not be paid out at the expense of the rest.

What matters, then, is not whether a fund has waiting periods and caps, but whether investors know about them. Anyone subscribing should know four things the factsheet rarely reveals: how long the notice period is, whether a lock-up is running, what the five percent refers to, and how long a restriction may last. The first three answers are generally in the prospectus, though rarely in one place. The fourth is usually missing.