Two funds, one plan

On 2 October 2026 Partners Group, based in Baar, Switzerland, announced that it would evolve its established private-equity evergreen strategy to give investors more flexibility. The fund in question is Global Value SICAV, the firm’s private-equity flagship, with net assets most recently put at EUR 6.6bn. It is to be moved into an umbrella structure with two sub-portfolios: one for growing, one for harvesting.

The reason is no secret. Since June the fund has paid out redemptions – as its prospectus provides – only up to a quarterly limit, and in some months little of that limit was left. The split is meant to separate two groups of investors with different needs: those who want to stay invested and those who want their capital back. Whether it goes ahead is for the shareholders to decide; their approval is still outstanding.

The plan: grow here, harvest there

One fund is to become two sub-portfolios under a single umbrella, run by the same team. The compounding fund, according to Partners Group, aims at long-term capital growth. The distributing fund is meant to let investors “harvest” accumulated gains through sales from the portfolio.

The dividing line runs between investment vintages, not between investors. Partners Group has not disclosed which vintages go where. Bloomberg reports that the distributing fund will receive the older holdings, while the compounding fund will concentrate on new investments. Evan Clark of the EDHEC Infrastructure & Private Assets Research Institute puts the split at 75% of assets in the distributing fund and 25% in the compounding fund; that figure does not appear in Partners Group’s own documents.

Existing investors are to have three options:

• Stay: keep their current exposure to the strategy.
• Switch: move shares from the distributing fund to the compounding fund. Technically this is a redemption from one and a subscription to the other, “subject to the liquidity terms” of both funds.
• Leave: redeem shares in one or both sub-portfolios.

Only the compounding fund will take new money; Partners Group intends to “right-size” it for efficient management and investment activity. The firm already holds a position through subsidiaries and employee share classes and has announced a further “meaningful” commitment from its own balance sheet – alongside new institutional clients who, according to co-CEO designate Roberto Cagnati, are already showing interest. Until shareholders approve, the existing structure remains unchanged.

How it came to this

The groundwork was laid in the spring, long before anyone spoke of a split. On 2 March the board called an extraordinary general meeting to bring Article 21 A of the articles of incorporation into line with the EU’s AIFMD II directive – that is, to anchor liquidity management tools such as redemption gates and deferrals firmly in the articles. On 17 March only around 31% of the capital was represented and the quorum was missed. It took a second meeting, on 1 April, to secure approval.

Nine weeks later the tool was needed. On 3 June Partners Group said that redemption requests for the second quarter amounted to around 9.8% of net asset value – almost double the contractual limit of 5% per quarter. The gate would now apply. At the time the fund was USD 8.6bn in size; its I share class had returned 9.8% a year net in dollars since 2009, with volatility of 5.6%. Liquidity, at around 15% of NAV, was within the target range, the firm said, backed by an undrawn credit facility worth 15% of the fund. According to Bloomberg, Partners Group’s shares suffered their steepest intraday fall on record.

Partners Group characterised the step as part of the fund’s normal operation: redemption limits are a standard feature of evergreen funds and protect long-term investors from fire sales; the fund remained open and would keep investing. As rumours of further restrictions circulated, the firm made clear on 12 June that it had no intention of changing documented liquidity mechanisms or freezing evergreen vehicles, and that the portfolios were healthy and sufficiently liquid.

The figures for the following months show how this mechanism works. The fund distinguishes between two groups: the “old” share classes, closed since December 2018, and the open “new” ones, each with its own 5% limit. Because subscriptions relieve the new classes, they fared sometimes better, sometimes worse – but in two of the four months since May the quarterly allowance had already been used up, and investors wishing to redeem received practically nothing. According to Citywire, redemption requests hit the 5% limit again in the third quarter.

A new quarter reopens the allowance; once it is used up, requests are carried forward to the next dealing day – and anyone who wishes can cancel the deferred portion of their request and stay invested. How such gates work in general is explained in the chapter on gating.

What is at stake for Partners Group

For the listed firm, the fund is more than one product among many. Of around USD 186bn in assets under management, 29% sits in evergreen vehicles, spread across more than 30 funds. Most charge their fees on NAV, so every dollar that flows out reduces revenue.

The firm’s own presentations address the issue openly. The business update of 15 July says that three mature strategies, distributed through five funds, were triggering or would trigger redemption limits. For these strategies, more than USD 1bn of redemptions had already been carried into the second half or submitted. And the mature private-equity evergreens carried a “higher concentration of challenging vintages” from 2019 to 2022, years in which the whole industry faced headwinds. It is along such vintage lines that Global Value SICAV is now to be divided.

Revenue feels it too. Performance fees were below 20% of revenues in the first half; over the medium term the firm is sticking to its target range of 25% to 40%. As early as 4 June Partners Group estimated that the evergreen platform could slow net AuM growth by 1% to 2% both in the second half of 2026 and in 2027; it reaffirmed its guidance of USD 26bn to 32bn in new client money, and in July it reported record fundraising for the first half. The split announcement stresses that the restructuring is “in line” with this guidance.

The market remains sceptical. The shares have lost around 39% since the start of the year, which according to Bloomberg makes them the year’s weakest performer in the MSCI Europe Financials index. On the day of the announcement they were at one point almost 1% higher on SIX, at around CHF 601. In the preceding days several analysts had cut their price targets:

The analyst figures are taken from media reports (ad-hoc-news, Finanztrends), not from the original research.

The lesson: evergreen does not always mean liquid

The split also shows how evergreen funds are built. An evergreen fund promises continuous subscriptions and regular redemptions, yet holds stakes that can only be sold over years. As long as money is flowing in, nobody notices. When the balance tips, the built-in safeguards kick in – which is exactly what they are there for.

On 5 October Evan Clark of the EDHEC institute described a downward spiral: a visible queue at the exit deters new investors, proceeds from exits go to redemptions rather than new deals, and open commitments to target funds still fall due. For Global Value SICAV he puts these unfunded commitments at more than EUR 2bn at the end of 2025, a figure that has grown with the expansion of secondaries, which made up around 54% and 53% of investments in 2024 and 2025 respectively. Around 42% of NAV came from the 2021 and 2022 vintages, invested after three exceptionally strong years.

When the balance tips, the built-in safeguards kick in.

Seen this way, the logic of the split is clear: the older holdings move into a portfolio that realises and distributes in an orderly fashion, while a smaller, unencumbered fund can attract money again. Whether the sales can be made close to reported value is the open question. Clark points to valuations of around 17.5 times EV/EBITDA in the US sister fund, and to the fact that the listed Partners Group Private Equity Ltd trades at a discount of more than 40% to NAV – with six top-ten holdings in common. Partners Group, for its part, points to ongoing realisations: in 2025 distributions from the portfolio amounted to 16% of NAV, and for 2026 the firm again expects more than 15%.

Partners Group is not alone. By its own account, the unrest began among private-credit funds at the end of 2025 and then spread to private equity; according to Private Wealth Daily and Citywire, other managers such as Blue Owl also cap redemptions at 5%. That a house with 25 years of evergreen experience is taking this route makes the case a precedent: it will show whether a split can do justice to both groups of investors.

What nobody knows yet

The announcement is an outline, not a blueprint. As at 8 October no invitation to a general meeting, new prospectus or FAQ on the split could be found on fundinfo, Fundsquare, Allfunds or Partners Group’s fund page. March showed that shareholder turnout cannot be taken for granted: the first meeting failed to reach a quorum. The main open questions are:

• The split: which vintages go into which fund, and in what proportion. The 75/25 estimate comes from EDHEC, not from Partners Group.
• The queue: what happens to deferred redemptions – for its three mature evergreen strategies, Partners Group cites more than USD 1bn that had been carried into the second half or already submitted as of mid-2026.
• The exit rules: whether the distributing fund pays out only after exits, and which liquidity terms apply to a switch.
• The valuation: whether holdings can be sold close to reported NAV. If not, payouts will be correspondingly smaller.
• The timetable: dates for the vote, the conversion and the first dealing days have not been published.

Until then the old order applies – including the 5% gate. For investors who want out, the announcement changes little for now. For those who want to stay, it promises a fund that can invest again rather than mainly having to pay out. Whether that promise holds will only become clear once the details are on the table.