Mandates: benefiting from another year of rapid growth

“We want a global buyout portfolio with small, mid and large cap holdings and a small exposure to growth and turnaround. A mandate structure was right for us because it doesn’t make sense to build a large global in-house team for our private equity allocation. We want to be hands-on and participate in the ultimate decisions regarding portfolio construction and the target funds to be subscribed. However, it is currently not practical or us, nor do we have the resources at the moment, to build close relationships with multiple GPs within a short period of time and monitor them over the longer term. Therefore, we need to partner with someone who already has those relationships and resources. Ardian, with its large team and established industry network, will source attractive investment opportunities across markets for our mandate, perform state of the art due diligence, and monitor our growing portfolio. We looked at the entire market and conducted a competitive manager search process in which we assessed areas such as track record, team stability, access to quality target funds as well as managers’ local presence in different parts of the world – we don’t like managers who just fly in and out. It was a thorough process and we felt that Ardian met our expectations. In addition, we have been assigned dedicated local contacts, including senior investment professionals in Germany for any regular and ad-hoc information requirements.”