PEI Awards 2018 EMEA secondaries: Campbell Lutyens, Glendower, Coller win big

Europe has been leading the way in GP-led secondaries in recent years and 2018 was no exception for innovative deals coming out of the region, as sister publication Private Equity International‘s 2018 awards show.

The year kicked off with Nordic Capital‘s restructuring of assets held in its 2008-vintage vehicle. Coller Capital and Goldman Sachs Asset Management backed the acquisition of €1.5 billion-worth of net asset value in a deal set the tone for the year and was chosen as deal of the year in Europe.

Competition was fierce in EMEA secondaries with advisor Campbell Lutyens taking home two awards and Glendower Capital also emerging victorious. Kirkland & Ellis cleaned the Law Firm of the Year (Secondaries) slate across all three regions.

1. Coller Capital, Goldman Sachs and Campbell Lutyens for €2.5bn Nordic Capital GP-led
2. Rede Partners, Pantheon, Idinvest Partners, Lombard Odier, HQ Capital and eQ Asset Management for re-launch of Lyceum as Horizon
3. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for Hermes GPE fund of funds restructuring

The GP-led secondaries market was worth $24 billion last year. Last year saw the largest such deal yet, a process on Nordic Capital’s 2008-vintage fund which saw €2.5 billion of net asset value moved into a continuation vehicle. Backed by Coller Capital and Goldman Sachs, and run by Campbell Lutyens, the deal gave the GP more time to work on its assets and offered liquidity to LPs that wanted it. “The Nordic transaction was all about taking good assets and putting them into the right home, securing additional time to maximise value creation,” Rune Munk, a London-based partner at Coller, said at the time.

1. Glendower Capital
2. Coller Capital
3. Goldman Sachs

Glendower Capital only spun out in 2017 but has already established itself as a force. The former secondaries arm of Deutsche Asset Management has raised $2 billion for its first independent fund, on its way to a hard-cap of $2.5 billion. It has also been on the end of several interesting deals, including the acquisition of a €100 million portfolio of direct stakes from Bridgepoint and a $530 million GP-led deal involving US deal-by-deal investor Argonne Capital Group.

“Glendower has gone through an intense and exciting journey in its first 18 months of its life as an independent firm. We are very pleased and thankful for the continuing strong support of our existing and new partners since we launched Glendower,” says Carlo Pirzio-Biroli, managing partner and CEO.

1. Campbell Lutyens
2. Rede Partners
3. Lazard

It is apt that the advisor of the year in Europe also worked on the deal of the year. Campbell Lutyens followed up its work on the ground-breaking BC Partners transaction with a €2.5 billion GP-led process on Nordic Capital’s 2008-vintage fund, the largest deal of its type. It also advised Eurazeo on a deal that saw it move around €600 million of assets off its balance sheet into a new vehicle. In the past 12 months, Campbell Lutyens’ secondaries team has advised on an aggregate $9 billion of transaction volume.

1. Kirkland & Ellis
2. Debevoise & Plimpton
3. O’Melveny & Myers

Kirkland & Ellis remains the dominate secondaries law firm in Europe in terms of the volume and variety of deals it did last year. It advised on $6.85 billion of transactions in the region, including seven GP-led deals worth a combined $5.1 billion. These included our Deal of the Year, the process on Nordic Capital’s 2008-vintage fund. It also worked on a number of preferred equity deals for a combined value of more than $750 million.