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EQT has acquired specialist UK investor Coller Capital for up to $3.7bn, as the Swedish buyout firm seeks a foothold into the booming market for ageing private capital assets.
The Stockholm-listed group said on Thursday it would pay $3.2bn upfront for Coller, an early pioneer of the market for buying and selling existing stakes in buyout funds.
The transaction will be funded by EQT selling 81mn of its shares, followed by a payment of up to $500mn after a year depending on business performance.
The landmark deal follows multiple years in which the so-called secondaries market has broken records, as buyout fund investors such as pension plans have sold their stakes to generate cash when private equity firms have struggled to sell the underlying portfolio companies.
Founded by British businessman Jeremy Coller, the UK fund has nearly $50bn in assets under management, with $33bn of those counted as fee-generating.
Coller was one of the first firms to start buying stakes in existing buyout funds in the 1990s and now does the same with credit funds, as well as backing so-called continuation vehicles where managers sell their own assets to themselves.
“Entering the secondaries space with Coller represents a natural and important step in EQT’s strategic development,” said Per Franzén, chief executive of EQT.
“Secondaries have become an increasingly important tool for clients in managing liquidity and portfolio construction, and in supporting long-term ownership of high-quality assets.”
EQT, which manages €270bn in assets across private equity, infrastructure and real estate, also said on Thursday it had beaten analyst estimates for the proportion of assets that pay fees, at €141bn for 2025, up from €136bn the year before.
The group said it had more than doubled its gross inflows through fundraising in the year, to €26bn.
Gross exits from EQT’s investments, which allow private capital firms to generate performance fee revenues, increased from €11bn to €19bn in 2025, which EQT said was its “most active exit year ever”.
The group’s total management fees for the year came in just shy of average analyst expectations at just under €2.2bn. The group’s total revenues fell slightly to €2.6bn. Value creation in EQT’s funds fell from 14 per cent to 8 per cent when excluding the effects of exchange rates.
The acquisition of Coller will also provide a boost to EQT’s attempt to attract more wealthy investors, with its new Coller EQT arm offering four so-called evergreen funds designed to suit individuals. EQT raised €1.9bn in its own evergreen funds and open-ended vehicles for institutions last year.
EQT’s founder Conni Jonsson announced late last year that he would step down as the group’s chair and nominated Jean Eric Salata as his replacement, who founded Baring Private Equity Asia which merged with EQT in 2022.
EQT shares rose 4.9 per cent in early morning trading in Stockholm.