Singapore-based investment manager Aquilius Investment Partners has announced raising $400 million for its maiden fund that will invest in secondaries transactions in the Asia-Pacific region.
Alongside the $400-million commitment, Aquilius said it also raised an additional $200 million of managed accounts available for co-investments from its investors, which include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and endowments.
Aquilius Investment Partners Secondary Fund I LP (AIP SF I) seeks to invest in traditional and non-traditional secondaries in the Asia-Pacific region. It has already made existing investments across a set of secondary solutions, per the announcement.
“We have seen strong institutional demand for our dedicated Asia secondaries strategy and are grateful for the trust that our clients have placed in us with the closing of our maiden fund,” said founding partner Christian Keiber.
Keiber and Bastian Wolf founded Aquilius, which has already executed over $2 billion in transactions through market cycles.
Wolff said the firm sees an increasing need for secondaries products, driven by a slowdown in overall exit activity, a significant tail of unrealised NAV across older fund vintages, and a changing regulatory environment.
The close of Aquilius’s maiden secondaries fund comes as supply has been outgrowing demand in the secondaries market. According to a report released by Hamilton Lane, this year will see heightened investor interest in private credit, infrastructure, and secondaries.
In an interview with DealStreetAsia last month, Hamilton Lane’s managing director and head of Southeast Asia Kerrine Koh said the secondaries market in Asia is increasingly gaining steam as both GPs and LPs in the region are clocking deals in this segment with valuations becoming more attractive amid macroeconomic headwinds.
The Asian secondaries market in particular has been emerging as a significant market and flourishing as well, with volumes rising 13-fold in merely a decade to over $7 billion in transactions in 2021, according to data provided by Greenhill.
Continuation funds are expected to gain popularity as they help in prolonging a fund’s life till better exit returns are possible. These vehicles absorb one or more portfolio investments from an existing fund.
In January, Blackstone Inc announced raising $25 billion for two funds that dabble in secondaries and co-investments. London-headquartered Coller Capital also reached the first close of its maiden RMB secondaries fund, with a target size of 1.5 billion yuan ($218 million), early this month.