EQT launches local private wealth strategy, Zurich bigwig flies in - The Australian Financial Review

Street Talk

Jul 23, 2023 – 8.00pm

In a little over three years, EQT has gone from zero to some $8 billion in deals around the country. Now the Swedish private equity firm is growing again, launching its first private wealth fund in Australia.

Street Talk can reveal Zurich-based EQT managing director and head of fund strategy, William Vettorato, arrived in Sydney in recent weeks and is expected to start meeting with a broad range of financial institutions and distribution partners ahead of the launch of the fund, known as Nexus.

It is believed EQT has appointed Channel Capital as its local service provider to operate the Australian unit trust.

EQT managing director, William Vettorato, will lead the Swedish buyout fund’s private wealth strategy in Australia.  

Nexus has already been rolled out in Sweden as EQT moves to provide access for high net worth individuals and family offices to its portfolio. The fund started with assets worth some €350 million ($579 million) and EQT has made commitments of about €700 million, it told investors this year.

The pitch to investors, sources said, is that through a single investment, EQT can provide them with access to a global, diverse platform of strategies and asset classes from early-stage venture capital and life sciences to massive private equity buyouts and infrastructure deals. Nexus will also co-invest in companies alongside EQT’s funds, those sources said.

But EQT appears to be more selective in the investors it will bring onboard locally. In Europe, Nexus is targeting individuals with a minimum investment of €25,000. In Australia, it is expected to make Nexus available to wholesale investors at a minimum allocation of around $500,000. But wealthy investors will also be able to access the fund at lower ticket sizes through local aggregators.

In an update to investors earlier this year, EQT managing partner Christian Sinding said Nexus was “part of a strategic priority to grow and, over time,
scale [the firm’s] efforts across private wealth”. “Whilst the private
wealth segment represents a $US135 trillion ($200 trillion) capital pool, today, just two percent of global allocations to private markets come from private wealth,” Sinding wrote to shareholders at the time.

EQT is, itself, a spin-off from a family office owned by the Wallenbergs, the wealthy Swedish industrialists who now own large stakes in companies ranging from AstraZeneca to Ericsson. They still own 15 per cent of EQT.

The private equity firm earlier this month closed its fourth industrial real estate fund at $7.2bn. Last year the firm closed an Asia-focused private equity fund at $16.5bn. In Australia, it teamed up with Phil King’s Regal Partners to make a $1.1 billion play for Perpetual and last year splashed $530 through its Baring Private Equity Asia arm to buy the Hilton Sydney.

Sarah Thompson has co-edited Street Talk since 2009, specialising in private equity, investment banking, M&A and equity capital markets stories. Prior to that, she spent 10 years in London as a markets and M&A reporter at Bloomberg and Dow Jones. Email Sarah at sarah.thompson@afr.com

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EQT launches local private wealth strategy, Zurich bigwig flies in - The Australian Financial Review
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