Partners Group: AuM $185bn, $30bn net new assets

Partners Group closed 2025 with a robust set of flows and exits that pushed assets under management to USD 185 billion, marking a 21% year‑on‑year increase. The firm reported USD 30 billion of gross new assets for the year, beat its own guidance range and signalled a resilient fundraising engine despite a muted private markets backdrop.

The group deployed capital actively, committing USD 27 billion across private markets strategies while generating USD 26 billion of realisations. CEO David Layton framed the results as an outperformance: the firm grew fundraising, investments and exits in an environment where overall industry transaction and fundraising volumes remain significantly below the 2019–2021 peak.

Fundraising in 2025 was dominated by bespoke mandates and evergreen vehicles, which together accounted for the majority of client demand. The firm recorded USD 26.2 billion of total client commitments, with mandates and evergreens both posting record years and traditional closed‑ended programmes contributing materially to the mix. Partners Group also recorded a one‑off USD 4.0 billion uplift from the Empira Group acquisition when calculating gross inflows, while FX and NAV‑linked program adjustments added further positive effects to reported AuM.

Strategic partnerships were a clear focus: the firm announced a number of joint ventures and distribution arrangements with major financial services players. Those collaborations explicitly named in the release include Deutsche Bank, PGIM (Prudential’s investment management arm), Generali Investments, Lincoln Financial, Erste Asset Management, BBVA Asset Management and Perpetual Group. Management expects these alliances—built around evergreens, mandates and private markets program creation—to be a persistent source of net new client demand.

On the investment front, direct assets continued to be central to the strategy: roughly 65% of 2025 deployment was into direct investments. Examples highlighted by the firm include the acquisition of Infinity Fincorp Solutions in India and investments into US power solutions via Life Cycle Power. The firm also led a royalty‑backed financing supporting the artist partnership with Lyric Capital. Partners Group noted its experience in India, having invested c. USD 2.5 billion regionally over recent years, and emphasised opportunities in non‑bank lending and power‑as‑a‑service tied to data centre and industrial demand.

Realisation activity was strong: direct equity exits rose sharply and the business monetised assets from pre‑2022 vintages at premiums to prior valuations. One cited example was the sale of PCI Pharma Services, a company transformed into a global biologics CDMO during Partners Group’s ownership.

Looking ahead, the firm set a fundraising range of USD 26–32 billion of gross new client demand for 2026 and reiterated long‑term guidance for performance fees to represent 25–40% of revenues, while flagging that performance fee timing pushed some cash into 2025. President and Head of Business Development Juri Jenkner pointed to growth priorities in APAC and the Middle East and to continued rollout of evergreen products. Head of Portfolio Solutions Roberto Cagnati emphasised bespoke and evergreen capabilities as distribution differentiators.

Management will discuss the results on a conference call at 18:15 CET today. Key corporate dates include the announcement of full financial results and Capital Markets Day on 10 March 2026, the AGM on 20 May 2026 and the mid‑year AuM update on 15 July 2026. The results underline a strategy that combines direct investing, tailored client mandates and third‑party partnerships to capture private markets demand even as macro uncertainty persists.