Strategies that invest in private markets certainly had a fair wind for much of the past decade, with low interest rates and the correlated performance of listed equity and bond markets nudging many clients towards alternatives such as unquoted equities.

And many have prophesied the death of public markets in recent years, with many companies opting to stay unlisted for longer with the backing of private equity.

That higher interest rates would create a potential liquidity crisis for private equity funds has to some extent been the dog that hasn’t barked this year, while bonds and equities falling together in 2022 kept the uncorrelated story somewhat intact.

A glance at our database shows the average allocation to private equity funds among the allocators we cover is currently 15 basis points, a range which has hardly changed over the past year or so.

Which means allocators are obviously not too worried about the lack of options on the public market.

The house with the largest exposure, in a distribution which is narrow given the small allocations involved, is Rathbones at 30 basis points, while the only other allocator we cover to have any current exposure to private equity funds is Premier Miton, at 10 basis points. 

The most widely owned private equity strategy among the allocators we cover is jointly HgCapital, the Chrysalis investment trust run by Jupiter and Baillie Gifford’s Schiehallion investment trust. 

All of those funds appear in two of the portfolios we monitor. 

That latter is a Baillie Gifford trust which was not initially marketed widely, but has started to gain some traction, having picked up a new buyer in 2023.