Ardian Raise $30 Billion for Secondaries Platform

Ardian, a world-leading private investment house based in France, on Thursday said that it has raised $30 billion for its ninth-generation secondaries platform, making it the largest secondaries fundraise globally to date and cementing Ardian’s leadership of the secondaries market.

This represents a significant increase over the $19 billion raised for Ardian’s eighth-generation platform in 2020 and brings Ardian’s Secondaries & Primaries Assets Under Management to $97 billion.

The successful fundraise, which was oversubscribed and closed at its hard cap, highlights the continued and growing appetite for secondaries investments among LPs, as market volatility and the need for liquidity drove deal volumes to record highs in 2024.

The fundraise attracted a wide range of global investors, with more than 465 investors in total from 44 countries across Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Asia. The diversified LP base includes major pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, financial institutions and high-net worth individuals.

There was particularly strong growth among private wealth clients, which account for 22% of the total equity raised, compared to 11% in the eighth-generation platform, Ardian said.

This latest platform is aligned with Ardian’s existing secondaries strategy of acquiring stakes in best-in-class private equity assets, providing liquidity solutions to the largest, most sophisticated institutional investors and general partners in the market.

The demand for and size of this latest generation demonstrates that Ardian is one of the few firms with the capital to transact the largest and most complex transactions in the Secondaries market. With its deep pool of data and the use of AI, the integrated platform enables Ardian to identify the best funds to buy at any time and allows the team to make evidence-based investment decisions with more agility and speed.

Investors’ Outlook

Mark Benedetti, Executive President & Co-Head of Secondaries, Ardian, said that his company was actively capitalising on a generational buying opportunity for secondaries. With the continued exponential growth in private markets, investors increasingly look to secondary buyers to help them actively manage their private equity portfolios.

And more recently, with a changing interest rate environment and public market volatility, many find themselves over-allocated and in need of a solution, he said.

“These market dynamics, combined with the strength of our offering, have helped us achieve this record-breaking milestone. The scale of our platform allows us to secure transactions of unprecedented size, including our two most recent secondary deals, each of which are larger than $3 billion. I sincerely thank our investors for their continued support and trust,” he explained.

Vladimir Colas, Executive Vice-President & Co-Head of Secondaries, Ardian, said that the past 12 months marked a record-breaking year for secondaries volume. Using the secondary market for liquidity and portfolio rebalancing is no longer a one-off decision but now an integral part of institutional investors’ private markets investment strategies.

He said that this has led to much larger volumes of assets for sale, creating unprecedented opportunities for buyers of scale while at the same time allowing even greater selectivity. As the market grows, funds with significant capital to deploy and the ability to transact the most complex deals will benefit.

“We have a robust and diversified portfolio of funds managed by world-leading GPs, with our ninth fund already 50% deployed and with an average deal size of $2 billion for LP portfolios. We expect 2025 to be an even stronger year of activity, and we are deeply thankful to our investors, who have ensured that we are well capitalised for this market opportunity,” Colas added.