Partners Group Management Reshuffle Leaves Investors Unimpressed
(Bloomberg) — Partners Group Holding AG reshuffled its top management after a slump in first-half earnings and warned of a weaker outlook for performance fees.
The Swiss private markets firm named veterans Roberto Cagnati and Juri Jenkner as co-chief executive officers, replacing David Layton, who will become chief investment officer. The shares slumped as much as 8.6%, bringing declines this year to almost 32%.
Partners Group, one of Europe’s largest alternative asset managers, has been struggling to emerge from a troubled period marked by a sustained share price decline, investor withdrawals and doubt over its valuation methods. Yet the firm reiterated its guidance for fundraising for this year on the back of record new assets in the first half.
Earlier this year, a wave of redemption requests hit Partners’ “evergreen” funds, which offer access to private markets with periodic withdrawals. The firm has been affected to a degree by the global decline in confidence over private markets.
“PG has announced a soft management reshuffle,” Pierre-Yves Gauthier, CEO and head of strategy at AlphaValue said. “This is intriguing. It may bring power back to Switzerland in contrast with Mr. Layton running the firm from the US. The US is where the money is but also where the mess in evergreens started.”
Revenue fell 7% to 1.12 billion Swiss francs ($1.4 billion) in the six months to June from the same period last year, dragged down by a 39% decline in performance income. The alternative asset manager said that it was impacted by several sizeable exits that were “accelerated to capture market momentum.”
The firm said it now expects performance income to be around the range of 20% to 25% of total revenue for 2026, having previously said it expects between 25% and 40%. It said this was dependent “on the timing of select active direct exit processes.”
Citigroup Inc. analyst Nicholas Herman said he expects investors to react cautiously to the management change, and to the earnings coming in below consensus expectations. Profit decreased 13% to 502 million francs, below analyst estimates for 521 million francs.
Role Transition
The firm had previously signaled that Layton would transition into a different role.
Cagnati and Jenkner, who both joined the firm in 2004, “are highly experienced executives with a long history at Partners Group,” Chairman Steffen Meister said in a statement. “We are also pleased that after eight successful years as CEO, Dave is continuing in a key role in the firm.”
Despite the challenges evident in the past year, Partners has shown little sign of a radical change of course. In an interview with Bloomberg in June, Meister said there was “no need to change our strategy.”
The firm has reacted to recent turmoil by rotating long-term insiders into the top leadership team, rather than outside talent. Meister also commented on Layton’s move to the CIO role after holding the top executive job.
At “most companies, if that happens, the CEO would go on retirement or the competition or whatever,” he said on an earnings call. “That’s not PG style.”
At Partners, “successful key leaders in the firm, when they step back from their functions, they usually continue in other functions,” Meister said.
Cagnati has recently been head of portfolio solutions and chief risk officer. Jenkner is currently President and head of business development.
The firm, split between Zug in Switzerland and Denver, Co., has long been atypical of the private equity industry.
Partners downplays buyouts in favor of growing companies. The slogan “built differently to build differently” is emblazoned on its Baar, Switzerland headquarters while signage at the firm’s Colorado campus proclaims: “This Is Not Wall Street.”
Evergreen funds, which Partners Group pioneered in the early 2000s, have been central to its growth, and the centerpiece of its recent troubles. Those funds make up some 30% of all assets, with about $56 billion in evergreen funds as of year-end.
On the earnings call, Layton said that the firm had been “too concentrated” on certain segments. Partners is “working to build that diversification,” he said.
In July the company reported that across the group, clients added $16 billion in new commitments in the first half of the year, pushing assets under management to $186 billion.
Partners Group is considering paring back the overall sizes of its evergreen funds for wealthy investors, while broadly keeping its investment approach unchanged, Meister has said.
(Updates with shares. A previous version of this story was corrected to amend spelling of Jenkner’s name.)
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