News that Partners Group is limiting redemptions on an $8.6 billion evergreen private equity fund sent share prices tumbling Wednesday amid fears that the problems plaguing private credit could be spreading to other asset classes.
The Swiss investment manager said it was limiting the amount investors could redeem from Partners Group Global Value SICAV to 5% of the fund’s net asset value, after receiving requests exceeding that limit during Q2. The fund is one of the oldest PE vehicles targeted at wealthy individual investors.
The firm said in a statement that it sees redemption limits as “indispensable” to meeting the needs of those seeking liquidity while “preserving investment capital for long-term investors who want to capitalize on market opportunities.”
Investors who have submitted a redemption request will receive approximately 62% of what they requested. The unpaid portion will be canceled and not carried forward into the next liquidity window.
Partners Group’s share price dropped 16.3% by the end of trading on Wednesday. Other large European PE firms, such as EQT, CVC Capital Partners and Bridgepoint Group, also experienced appreciable declines.
The firm has also been facing growing competition from newer evergreen offerings managed by US rivals such as Blackstone and KRR, the Financial Times reported in January. The firm’s flagship US offering lost more in redemptions than it received in new money for the first time in 2025.
Evergreen PE funds could be set to experience the same mass outflows experienced by credit vehicles aimed at the same constituency of wealthy individual investors.
Though much smaller and newer than business development companies, which have borne the brunt of the trouble facing the private credit market, evergreen PE vehicles posted record inflows last year and are forecast to top $1 trillion of total NAV by the end of the decade.
PE vehicles are, in some ways, more exposed to corporate distress than BDCs, which mainly make senior-secured loans to private businesses. Equity holders are last in line to recover their money in the event of bankruptcies, which have been ticking up since interest rates rose in 2022. This has been compounded by recent shocks, such as investor panic over the potential impact of AI on the business models of SaaS companies.
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In Q1, investors requested to pull roughly $13.2 billion from US nontraded BDCs, which extend loans to privately owned businesses, according to investment bank Robert A. Stanger & Co.
Sponsors agreed to meet about half of this demand.
