Banner Ridge surpasses predecessor with $2.15bn secondaries fund close

Banner Ridge Partners has held a $2.15 billion final close for its latest flagship secondaries fund, Secondaries Investor has learned.

Banner Ridge Secondary Fund V closed well above its $1.4 billion target, per Secondaries Investor data, and has far eclipsed its predecessor, which closed on $1 billion in 2021.

The vehicle, which launched in November 2022, had reached its $2 billion hard-cap by August 2023. The additional $150 million was raised from friends and family of Banner Ridge staff, as well as strategic investors, managing partner Tony Cusano told Secondaries Investor.

The vehicle was oversubscribed after receiving commitments from a wide range of institutional investors, including pension funds The Fire & Police Pension Association of Colorado, Missouri Department of Transportation & Patrol Employees’ Retirement System, Montgomery County Employees’ Retirement System, New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, South Carolina Retirement Systems and The Utah School and Institutional Trust Funds Office, according to Secondaries Investor data and Banner Ridge.

The investor base also included several prominent family offices, according to a statement.

The New York-based firm, a spin-out of Siguler Guff, was founded in 2019 by Cusano, the latter firm’s former secondaries head. Since the strategy’s inception at Siguler Guff in 2010, Banner Ridge partners have committed over $3 billion to 150 managers focused on distressed, special situations and credit strategies globally, the statement said.

The firm closed its second fund targeting distressed, special sits and credit opportunities on a primary basis, Banner Ridge DSCO Fund II, in 2022. The vehicle reached its hard-cap, raising $639 million of total commitments, Secondaries Investor reported at the time.

The firm will continue investing across primary, secondaries and co-investment transactions with a focus on investing in a subset of the market characterised by complexity and limited access to information, the statement added.

“Higher interest rates and a lack of liquidity in the market paired with greater acceptance of secondaries as a portfolio management tool is driving exceptional opportunities for us,” Cusano said in the statement. “We have continuously expanded our investment team to include a broad array of skills, which has led to increased dealflow and better access to information, allowing us to make more informed investment decisions.”

“We have made several investments in the fund and continue to make progress on a robust pipeline of opportunities that align squarely with our proven secondary investment strategy,” co-founder C J Driessen, a former Siguler Guff secondaries principal, said in the statement.