Private Equity

Offering expertise, specialist knowledge and shrewd judgement in a rapidly growing global market.

Risk warning

The value of investments, and the income from them, can go down as well as up and an investor may get back less than the amount invested. Past performance is not a guide to future results.

Experience

£13.0bn/€14.5bn/$16.9bn AUM and we hold over 400 advisory board seats. We offer a huge range of private equity solutions for our clients, having raised over 100 vehicles, backed over 500 private equity general partners (GPs) and having made over 1,000 fund commitments.

Source: abrdn, all data as at 31 December 2021.

Expertise

We have over 40 private equity professionals globally, bringing invaluable on-the-ground insight and expertise.

Resource
We are also able to leverage huge resources from across abrdn, including industry-leading economic research, a global distribution network, dedicated legal, due diligence, finance, operations, risk and responsible investing teams. This means our clients have access to the best investment insights from across our whole business.

What we offer our clients

Primary Investments

Primary investments are those made in private equity funds during their initial capital-raising. A portfolio of primary fund investments, also known as a fund-of-funds, gives investors access to the expertise of multiple fund managers and a variety of companies through a single investment.

Secondary investments

Secondary investments involve the buying and selling of pre-existing investor commitments to private equity funds. We are well placed and active in the secondary market where our deep relationships, strong reputation and network of intermediaries give us a distinct advantage and allow us to offer our clients excellent access to this market.

Co-Investments

Private equity co-investments, or direct investments, are investments made alongside another GP directly into companies. There are many benefits to co-investing, including the ability to gain exposure to what we believe are attractive investment opportunities whilst avoiding a layer of fees. Again, our strong, long-standing relationships with GPs, combined with our proven experience, mean we are leading players in this segment of the market.

Investment trust

The investment objective is to achieve long-term total returns through holding a diversified portfolio of private equity funds and direct investments into private companies alongside private equity managers (“co-investments”), a majority of which will have a European focus.