Partners Group Denies Evergreen Freeze as $1.5B Secondaries Fund Attracts $650M in First Close

Redemption caps on evergreen funds and a legal dispute drag Partners Group stock to 30% YTD loss. Oversold RSI suggests potential rebound ahead of July AUM update.

The Swiss private-markets specialist has forcefully pushed back against speculation that it was preparing to freeze or impose additional liquidity restrictions on its evergreen fund range. But the denial has done little to arrest the slide in Partners Group’s stock, which closed Friday at €767.00 — a 30% year-to-date decline that leaves it just 4.6% above the 52-week low of €733.00. The relative strength index at 28.7 signals deeply oversold territory, and all eyes are now on July 15, when the group updates its assets under management for the first half.

The market jitters are not without foundation. Redemption requests on the $8.6 billion Global Value SICAV hit nearly 10% of net asset value in the latest quarter, forcing Partners Group to cap withdrawals at the contractual 5% limit. A Delaware vehicle also breached the threshold with roughly 6% of NAV requested back. Three other mature evergreen funds, collectively managing $9.7 billion, are expected to see redemption requests of between 3.5% and 5% for the second quarter. Management has made clear it will apply the 5% ceiling to those vehicles as well if needed. Most of the redemption pressure originates from the private wealth channel, which accounts for around 20% of the group’s $185 billion in total AUM. The situation has been compounded by a legal battle with US short seller Grizzly Research, which alleged in late April that up to 40% of evergreen investments were significantly overvalued.

Yet even as the outflow debate raged, Partners Group quietly closed the first tranche of its fifth real estate secondaries program. The fund has a $1.5 billion target and hauled in more than $650 million at first close. It is seeded with a portfolio of three global real estate funds concentrated in residential, industrial and hospitality assets. The successful fundraise underscores the group’s ability to raise new capital even while managing elevated redemption demand.

Management maintains that the evergreen platform is fundamentally healthy. The two funds under the most scrutiny have delivered five times the capital committed since inception. Portfolio realisations ran at about 15% in 2025, a level the company expects to repeat this year, bolstered by ongoing distributions from portfolio companies and undrawn credit lines. Gross new client demand is still targeted at $26 billion to $32 billion for 2026. However, the drag from the evergreen platform is expected to shave one to two percentage points off net AUM growth in the second half of this year, with a similar headwind anticipated for 2027.

At current levels the stock has surrendered 37% from its August 2025 peak. That leaves plenty of room for a rebound if July’s AUM report shows that client inflows comfortably outpaced redemptions. A weaker-than-expected figure could test the recent lows, but the oversold technical reading suggests the selling pressure may be nearing exhaustion.