The move is yet another example of how the market for "secondaries" funds continues to gain ground, along with structures carrying an "evergreen" format.

Coller Capital, the UK-headquartered private market secondaries business which is being bought by Sweden’s EQT, has entered a distribution pact with Italy’s Mediobanca Private Banking. Under the partnership, the Coller Equity Feeder (“CollerEquity”) fund is being exclusively offered to high net worth and ultra-HNW clients in Italy.

CollerEquity sits within Coller Capital’s $4 billion evergreen platform which provides institutional and professional investors with access to Coller Capital’s secondaries investment expertise. 

Mediobanca Private Banking’s bankers will be supported by Coller’s private wealth secondaries solutions (PWSS) team, including Jonathan Aiach and Claudio Caruso, who are dedicated to the Italian market.

“Mediobanca has long led the way in bringing high quality private markets opportunities to Italian qualified investors. We are pleased to join forces to expand access to institutional grade private equity secondaries across the wealth channel,” Jake Elmhirst, partner, head of private wealth secondaries solutions and head of capital formation at Coller Capital, said in a statement. 

The drive comes as Mediobanca's own activities have made headlines. Inn February, Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS) said it took full control of Milan-headquartered Mediobanca, delisted it, while preserving its brand. Mediobanca has a substantial private banking arm, including Monaco’s CMB. (In February 2008, Mediobanca acquired Unicredit’s private banking activities in Monaco through CMB. The deal followed the acquisition of ABN AMRO’s branch in the principality in November 2006.) 

Greta Teot, executive director and head of private markets at Mediobanca Private Banking, added: “Secondary strategies have evolved from a tactical allocation within private investors’ portfolios into a core strategic component, supported by the structural expansion and increasing sophistication of the market. The evergreen structure further enhances these intrinsic advantages, enabling investors to access diversification, visibility and cash flow dynamics in a more efficient way.”

Coller Capital, founded in 1990, has become one of the more prominent players in the secondaries space – the business of buying pre-exiting private market investments, enabling investors in closed-ended funds to liquidate their stakes ahead of the usual end date. This liquidity option has grown more popular as the private markets sector has matured. (See an interview with Coller Capital and coverage of its build-out here.) There is a great deal of headroom for growth. In the primary market, for example, there is an estimated $11 trillion of unrealised net asset value inside private equity firms globally; Coller has said that this market could reach $500 billion in transaction volume by 2030.

This publication also recently examined the area of “evergreen” (open-ended) funds and how prepared this sector might be for a sustained economic downturn – see stories here and here.