LGT reaches $2bn hard-cap

Switzerland-based LGT Capital Partners has raised its largest-ever secondaries fund, holding a $2 billion final close on Crown Global Secondaries III.

Launched in 2011, the fund has already completed several transactions, according to Ivan Vercoutere, managing partner at LGT.

Its predecessor raised $1.2 billion in 2009, while the maiden vehicle of the series closed on €609 million in 2005.

Fund III counts more than 80 institutions as LPs, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, LGT said in a statement. Fifty percent of its LPs are based in continental Europe, with the rest based in the Asia-Pacific region, North America, the UK and the Middle East.

“There was very strong demand for the offering, both from existing and new investors. We capped the fund at $2 billion, and it ended up significantly oversubscribed,” Tycho Sneyers, managing partner at LGT, said in the statement.

The fund close comes a few weeks after LGT won a £280 million mandate from Hertfordshire County Council, a UK pension fund, to be managed in a separate account investing across nine different asset classes.

The firm also bought Clerestory Capital Partners, a real estate investment firm, in December last year. Clerestory has been renamed LGT Clerestory and is now the real estate arm of LGT.

LGT, which invests 70.5 percent of total assets into private equity, commits funds to generalist, secondaries, buyouts, turnaround, growth and venture capital funds. It has $25 billion of assets under management, with investments made in more than 650 funds.