Coller inks credit secondaries deal with China’s Ping An Insurance unit

The asset management and overseas investment arm of China’s Ping An Insurance has again tapped third-party investor capital for liquidity via the secondaries market.

London-headquartered Coller Capital, alongside co-investment vehicles, invested $580 million in the transaction to back a portfolio of four flagship credit funds managed by North American and European GPs held by Ping An Overseas Holdings, according to a statement seen by Secondaries Investor.

An unnamed Asian institution is investing $100 million alongside Coller in the deal, which closed on 30 July.

“Over the past few years, we have seen strong growth in investor interest in credit funds, which have proven to be a source of sustainable income for investors despite market turbulence,” Hoi Tung, chairman and chief executive of Ping An Overseas Holdings, said in the statement. “By working with leading credit fund managers around the globe, we will continue to find attractive investment opportunities and deliver value to our partners and clients.”

The deal is described as the “world’s largest private credit secondaries transaction” in the statement.

Ping An will continue to manage the portfolio.

The portfolio covers 400 positions in over 250 companies, according to the statement. These positions are spread across industries including professional services, healthcare and telecommunications.

Akin Gump advised Coller on the transaction, according to a statement.

The deal comes five months after Secondaries Investor reported that Coller was launching a dedicated credit secondaries fund. The firm has had a specialist credit team for a decade and has invested more than $3 billion in the asset class through its flagship funds, the firm is understood to have told investors in May.

This is at least the third such secondaries deal Ping An has undertaken. Last October, China Ping An Insurance Overseas sold an $875 million strip of assets off the balance sheet to a group of investors led by Montana Capital Partners and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and used it to seed two private equity funds.

In 2019, the institution closed a similar process involving $758 million of infrastructure assets that Ardian backed, as Secondaries Investor reported.

Ping An Overseas Holdings is the main offshore investment and asset management platform of Ping An Insurance.

Credit secondaries accounted for 2 percent of deal volume in the first half of this year, showing little change from 3 percent for the same period last year, according to data from Evercore. Overall credit secondaries volume was 3 percent of the $60 billion that traded last year.

– This report was updated to include Akin Gump’s involvement.