Rob Collins, Co-head of Private Wealth at Partners Group, joined Julie Cooling, Founder and CEO of RIA Channel, at the CAIS Summit to discuss the firm’s innovations in alternative investment fund structures.
Partners Group launched the first semi-liquid evergreen fund in 2001 and built a fund structure designed to meet the needs of RIAs in 2007. This structure sought to address pain points such as minimum investment sizes, regulatory eligibility, performance reporting, and tax reporting. Evergreen funds also overcome the challenge of getting invested, as traditional drawdown fund structures call capital over a period of several years. Collins notes that “Life is too short for capital calls.”
Partners Group has 600 investment professionals involved across the private markets, including co-investments, buying companies, lending to companies, buying secondaries, and investing in primary funds across infrastructure, private credit, private equity, and real estate. Partners Group seeks to invest in relative value, purchasing the right mix of assets at the right time over the course of the business cycle. Blending these assets together provides an opportunity to compound returns while having the income and distributions necessary to provide intermittent liquidity to investors.
Partners Group provides education to support RIAs on portfolio construction topics and a dedicated team to help advisors on that journey. Advisors need to understand which product type is best for their clients, choosing from drawdown funds, interval funds, tender offer funds, and non-traded REITs and BDCs. Since 2010, Partners Group has offered a 1.5-day academy where advisors can perform due diligence.
Advisors understand the importance of private investments as the US economy continues to offer growing opportunities in private markets relative to public markets. Entrepreneurs are keeping their companies private longer, due to increased capital availability in private markets and the complications of being publicly traded.
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