Partners Group is operating on two fronts at once. While one hand is actively raising $1.5 billion for its latest real estate secondaries vehicle, the other is scrambling to contain an unprecedented wave of redemption requests across its evergreen fund platform. The Zug-based asset manager just closed the first tranche of that fifth secondaries program, securing more than $650 million in commitments from investors, as it pushes ahead with a strategy to buy income-producing properties out of existing structures and provide liquidity to other fund managers.
The timing of the fundraise is deliberate. Illiquid markets across commercial real estate have created what the firm sees as attractive entry points for secondaries buyers. Its predecessor fund, launched in 2021, ranks in the top quartile of its category according to Preqin data, giving the team a track record to market.
But the capital raising effort cannot mask the stress building in the core private-wealth channel, which accounts for roughly 20 percent of Partners Group’s $185 billion in assets under management. The Luxembourg-domiciled Global Value SICAV, an open-ended evergreen fund with $8.6 billion in assets, saw redemption requests totalling approximately 9.8 percent of net asset value in the second quarter. Partners Group was forced to cap redemptions at 5 percent of NAV per quarter, triggering a liquidity warning that reverberated through the market. Other vehicles are feeling the pinch as well: a Delaware-based U.S. private equity fund expects redemption requests of around 6 percent in the current quarter, while three additional evergreen funds with combined assets of $9.7 billion are bracing for outflows ranging from 3.5 percent to 5 percent. The industry is not alone in facing this squeeze — Apollo Global Management, KKR, BlackRock and Blue Owl have all tightened redemption limits recently.
Compounding the operational pressure was a short-seller assault in May. U.S.-based Grizzly Research published a report comparing Partners Group to the defunct German payments company Wirecard and questioning the firm’s valuation practices. Management responded sharply, calling the allegations “frivolous, defamatory and highly misleading,” and filed a lawsuit. Co-founder Fredy Gantner later told the SonntagsZeitung that the stock market reaction had been a “massive overreaction” but admitted the company needed to improve its communication. “We definitely have to communicate better and more proactively,” he said, in what he described as a “painful lesson.”
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Partners Group?
The sell-off has been brutal. Partners Group shares currently trade near €753, down roughly 31 percent since the start of 2026 and close to their 52-week low. With a relative strength index around 25 — deep in oversold territory — the stock has fallen more than 27 percent below its 200-day moving average. Yet the company is offering a dividend yield of approximately 7 percent, and management is standing by its full-year targets. It still expects gross new client demand of between $26 billion and $32 billion for the year, though net growth will be weighed down by the ongoing redemptions from the evergreen platform.
To signal confidence, the company took the unusual step of opening a special trading window in early June so that employees could increase their personal holdings in the stock. So far, the insider buying has done little to staunch the bleeding in the public market, but it underscores the board’s belief that the underlying business remains intact. About 80 percent of Partners Group’s AUM comes from long-term institutional investors, providing a degree of stability that the retail-driven outflows may not threaten.
The next major test comes on July 15, when Partners Group will release its half-year update on assets under management and net inflows as of June 30. A full second-quarter earnings report is expected around September 1. Those numbers will reveal whether the $1.5 billion secondaries bet — and the broader institutional franchise — can offset the pressures building in the private wealth channel, and whether the company can begin to restore the trust that Gantner acknowledges has been shaken.
Ad
Partners Group Stock: Buy or Sell?! New Partners Group Analysis from June 12 delivers the answer:
The latest Partners Group figures speak for themselves: Urgent action needed for Partners Group investors. Is it worth buying or should you sell? Find out what to do now in the current free analysis from June 12.
Partners Group: Buy or sell? Read more here...
