Ardian receives $150m commitment from Penn SERS

The pension, which has almost $4bn in PE assets under management, has committed $100m to ASF VIII and made its first commitment to an Ardian co-investment fund.

Ardian has received a commitment to its latest flagship secondaries vehicle from Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System, which has also signed up as a co-investor.

The pension, which has $3.9 billion in private equity assets under management, committed $100 million to ASF VIII and $50 million to ASF VIII PA Co-Investment Fund, according to a press release.

The commitments were part of $975 million of private equity investments approved by the pension’s board at its 23-24 April meeting.

Ardian has been Penn SERS’s sole secondaries partner since 2010, according to Secondaries Investor data, having committed $100 million to the 2015-vintage ASF VII and $75 million to the 2010 ASF V. This is the first commitment it has made to an Ardian co-investment fund.

In February, Secondaries Investor reported that Ardian was seeking a total of $18 billion for its ASF VIII programme, comprising $12 billion for its commingled secondaries vehicle and $6 billion for co-investments. It would be the sixth largest private equity fund ever raised, alongside Blackstone Capital Partners VII, according to PEI data.

The fund came to market in May, Secondaries Investor reported.

ASF VIII is seeking a net multiple of 1.6x and a net internal rate of return of 16 percent, according to a broadcast of the University of Houston System’s August board of regents meeting. It is chiefly targeting LP portfolios of more than $1 billion in size.