Private markets specialist Partners Group has launched a standalone investment strategy to directly target opportunities in liquidity-driven assets in the evolving global market.
Joshua Hartz has joined Partners Group as global head of special opportunities and partner to lead the strategy, splitting his time between Switzerland and Sydney. Hartz was most recently a partner at Bain Capital, before which he spent more than a decade in various directorship roles across the financial services sector.
He is now building a dedicated global special opportunities investment team across the US, Europe and Asia, which will be integrated into the wider Partners Group platform.
With the backing of Partners, his team will be able to leverage the group’s private equity verticals for research insight, tapping into its credit and royalties teams for differentiated financing technology and due diligence capabilities and alternative financing options.
Headquartered in Switzerland, Partners is a global private markets firm with some US$185 billion assets under management (AUM) globally offering investment programs and custom mandates across private equity, private credit, infrastructure, real estate and royalties.
Investing on a global basis and focusing on corporate solutions, real assets and other like opportunities, the firm said it will engage in three types of transactions through this strategy.
These include providing structured liquidity for founder-led or growth businesses, investing in highly attractive assets suffering from constrained balance sheets and offering liquidity solutions where traditional capital is unavailable.
As geopolitical instability continues to fuel macro-economic uncertainty, Partners Group president Juri Jenkner said this offering will capture emerging investment opportunities
“The time is right to build on our track record with a dedicated team,” he said.
“Our strategy, leveraging the full breadth of the transformational investing skillsets from across our platform, will look to create asymmetric upside while protecting from downside risk.
“Special opportunities provide flexible capital solutions to assets across private markets, offering a distinct mix of characteristics for client portfolios. These include heightened downside protection and upside potential, with a shorter duration, thereby filling a gap on the risk/return spectrum.”
Hartz added that special opportunities strategies have been relied on in the past as a means of driving growth during times of dislocation and market expansion.
“In the coming economic transformation, driven by the increasingly fast pace of technological change and enhanced by looming debt maturity walls, slower GDP growth, and elevated global inflation, the volume of transaction opportunities requiring flexible private capital solutions is only increasing.
“The special opportunities team will continue the Partners Group tradition of partnering with founders, owners, and other stakeholders to drive transformational value creation.”
This announcement marks the continued expansion of the firm from last year which saw Partners Group launch an evergreen version of its royalties strategy in September, providing Australian advisers with access to its cross-sector offering.
Earlier in the year, the firm partnered with asset and wealth manager Perpetual to explore new investment products that combine both public and private assets, such as listed investment trusts, co-investments.
