Partners Group’s Founder Rift and Redemption Squeeze Overshadow $1.5 Billion Property Fund Launch

Co-founder Urs Wietlisbach separates his family office from PG3 AG, as Partners Group faces redemption caps and a 30% stock drop. Succession planning underway.

Urs Wietlisbach, one of the three co-founders of Partners Group, is striking out on his own. After more than a decade of pooling their fortunes through the joint family office PG3 AG, Wietlisbach is carving out a separate investment vehicle, handing the reins to Jascha Forster, a former money manager for Swiss billionaire Thomas Schmidheiny. The break-up comes at a moment when the private-markets giant is already wrestling with a redemption crisis and a stock that has lost nearly a third of its value this year.

The trio, who met at Goldman Sachs before building a firm that oversees $185 billion in assets, are now drafting a new shareholder agreement to define future decision-making. While the operational leadership of Partners Group remains untouched, market observers see the move as the clearest signal yet that succession planning is under way. Investors are left wondering whether the founders can remain cohesive even as their personal holdings diverge.

All this unfolds against the backdrop of a major fundraising push. In mid-June, Partners Group launched its fifth real estate secondaries program, targeting $1.5 billion in total commitments. The first closing drew over $650 million, with the strategy focused on residential, industrial and hotel properties. The firm is banking on a market environment where stretched transaction timelines and looming debt maturities are pressuring sellers, creating attractive entry points. Its predecessor fund (2021/2022 vintages) ranks among the top quartile by performance, according to Preqin, and the company has deployed over $6 billion across more than 120 such deals since 2008.

Earlier in April, Partners Group also wrapped up a private equity secondaries fund that pulled in more than $9 billion in commitments, with a large chunk coming from Asia-Pacific. The management has stuck to its 2026 gross inflow target of $26–32 billion, arguing that 80% of its AuM is anchored by long-term institutional clients — a structural buffer it considers a competitive edge.

Yet the stock has refused to cooperate. Jefferies slashed its price target to CHF 760 from a previous CHF 1,130, keeping a Hold rating. Oddo BHF downgraded the shares from Outperform to Neutral, setting a new target of CHF 920. Both houses point to potentially slower AuM growth, with Partners Group itself conceding that its evergreen dynamics could trim AuM expansion by one to two percentage points in the second half of 2026.

The real blow, however, is coming from the redemption front. In early June, the stock suffered a historic plunge after clients yanked money from several evergreen funds, forcing the company to cap withdrawals. A US private equity fund saw redemption requests of roughly 6% in the second quarter, while three other vehicles — together managing nearly $10 billion — are bracing for outflows of up to 5%. That redemption pressure is now spilling from private credit into private equity, investors fear.

The share price tells the story. Trading around 780 euros, Partners Group shares are down 29% year-to-date and more than 35% below their August 2025 high. The stock plumbed a 52-week low of 733 euros on June 3, and has only crept about 6% higher since. With the Jefferies price target at CHF 760 — roughly in line with the current level — the buffer against further slides looks thin.

The confluence of a founder’s personal restructuring, redemption caps, and analyst downgrades creates an unusually tense atmosphere for a firm that has long prided itself on stable institutional support. All eyes now turn to the half-year results, which will either vindicate the fund-raising optimism or confirm the worst fears. For Partners Group, the next few months are about proving that its programme machine can still generate momentum — even as its founding partnership enters a new chapter.