LGT’s Crown Global IV invested $384m in first half

LGT Capital Partners‘ 2016-vintage secondaries fund has invested around 14 percent of its current fund size, around 10 months after Secondaries Investor reported the firm had hit the target on the vehicle.

The Pfäffikon-headquartered firm had invested $384 million of Crown Global Secondaries IV as of 30 June, according to its results for the first half of the year. The $2.7 billion fund’s deals include $355 million to 15 secondaries transactions comprising 54 private equity funds.

The largest of these had a fair value of $63.9 million, the results noted.

The remainder of the $384 million comprises $28.6 million of commitments to three primary private equity funds.

Crown Global IV, which started committing capital on 9 January, had agreed to two secondaries and one primary transaction last year. The fund predominately invests in secondaries and may opportunistically invest in primary targets and in co-investments acquired by way of a secondaries transaction, according to the results.

Compared with its 2012-vintage predecessor, the fund has shown a notable turn toward growth capital assets. The strategy accounted for almost one-third of investments as of the end of June, compared with 7 percent of Crown Global Secondaries III, which had committed $1.76 billion of its $2 billion total as of the same date.

These investments come at the expense of large buyout investments, which make up 7 percent of Fund IV’s commitments, compared with 23 percent of its predecessor’s. Small and mid-size buyout remains the most popular fund-type, accounting for more than half of Fund IV’s investments and 52 percent of Fund III’s.

China and the US each account for one-third respectively of Fund IV’s exposure, followed by the UK and Germany, at 6 percent each.

The most common vintage year of assets in which Fund IV has invested is 2008, which accounts for 28 percent of the total, followed by 2014, which makes up 23 percent.

Investors in Fund IV include Employees Retirement System of Texas with a $200 million commitment and Luzerner Pensionskasse with an undisclosed commitment, according to PEI data.

LGT has been run by the royal family of Liechtenstein for more than 90 years. It has more than $50 billion in assets under management and employs 2,000 people across 20 locations in Europe, Asia, the Americas and the Middle East.