Leading global private markets secondaries house Coller Capital has just opened a new office in Singapore to complement its existing Asia Pacific presence in Hong Kong, Beijing, Seoul and Melbourne.
According to Peter Kim, partner and head of Asia at Coller Capital. Southeast Asia “presents significant opportunities for our business” with growing appetite for secondaries from institutional limited partners and private wealth investors.
“Our expansion into Singapore will allow us to meet this strong demand for investment solutions that offer enhanced liquidity, risk mitigation and diversification,” he says.
Coller is clearly looking at the new office as a wealth management and client relations platform as much as a focus for dealmaking. It certainly has enough of an opportunity to draw on. The company prioritises portfolio positions of limited partners, primarily institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals. These investors have been seeking liquidity and realisations amid a dearth of the expected exit opportunities.
According to a BlackRock report last year, 2023 saw US$115 billion of closed secondaries transactions, the second highest on record, with limited partners accounting for 55% and general partners, 45%.
The report said muted mergers and acquisitions and IPO activity continues to hold down realisations and traditional sources of liquidity, while sellers increasingly look to diversify secondary sales, singling out high-quality funds or segments of their portfolios to “manufacture distributions”. Supply from investors looking for returns from their portfolios outstripped demand, allowing buyers to achieve “meaningful discounts”.
In Asia, meanwhile, investors have diversified out of private equity as this former mainstay of private markets in the region became less and less able to deliver hoped-for returns.
All in all, Coller’s expansion in Asia looks timely and ready to tackle a sizeable addressable market. And as elsewhere in private markets secondaries right now, institutions and high-net-worth investors rather than fund managers look set to be the chief drivers and beneficiaries.
