Deals

AlpInvest, Ardian take PEI’s secondaries awards

Bumper fundraising, stapled deals and preferred equity were some of the themes in the awards for 2017.

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AlpInvest Partners, Ardian and Hong Kong’s TR Capital have been voted the best secondaries firms of the year in sister publication Private Equity International‘s 2017 Awards, announced on Thursday.

Readers chose the three firms in the Secondaries Firm of the Year categories across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific respectively, in PEI‘s annual industry poll.

AlpInvest raised $6.5 billion for its sixth secondaries programme, almost four-and-a-half times what it raised for its previous offering, cementing its position as a major secondaries player.

Ardian continues to tower above the rest of the market, driving dealflow on the buy- and sell-side. It was at the heart of some of the most interesting deals to take place in 2017, including a $2.5 billion transaction involving Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala – the largest stapled deal yet.

TR Capital continues to break new ground in Asia-Pacific. It closed its third fund last year on $200 million and closed five deals, including its first Vietnamese LP stake acquisition and a couple of Indian fund restructurings, which are understood to have closed.

The deals category was extremely competitive, with InvestIndustrial’s GP-led process taking the top prize in EMEA. The firm raised a fund to buy €750 million of assets from its own 2008-vintage vehicle, with backing from a group led by AlpInvest.

In the North America category preferred equity made a mark. The deal that came out on top was Landmark’s backing of Clearlake Capital in its purchase of a stake in its own GP management company. Asian deal of the year was the sale of a strip of assets by Warburg Pincus, a $1.2 billion process that accounted for a sizeable chunk of the market last year.

Evercore, Campbell Lutyens and Lazard claimed the highly prized advisory awards in North America, Europe and Asia, respectively. And it was a clean sweep for Kirkland & Ellis in the legal category, as it came out on top on in all three regions for the second consecutive year.