How to widen access to private markets

Over the past two decades, private market assets grew from $1 trillion to around $14 trillion, transforming the global investment landscape. With vastly more capital available outside public markets, companies are staying private for longer. And as they do, the share of investment opportunities accounted for by private markets continues to grow. 

Thanks to this investment megatrend, many institutional investors now have double-digit allocations to assets including private equity and infrastructure. These have provided diversification for their portfolios while generating attractive, long-term returns. For almost all individual investors, however, private markets have been difficult to access. As a result, private investors control more than half the capital available for investment globally but represent only 15% of alternative AUMs.
The key reason is that the limited partnership fund structures that dominate the institutional market are challenging for most private clients – minimum investment sizes are too large, many cannot commit their capital for a decade or more and periodic capital calls does not suit their financial situation.

But new structures address these obstacles, notably evergreen funds that offer smaller minimum investment sizes, regular opportunities to invest and no capital calls. These open-ended funds also provide a degree of liquidity. In 2023, Ardian launched its first evergreen fund in France and in 2025 it is rolling out the Ardian Access Series, a suite of US and Luxembourg evergreen funds investing in private equity and infrastructure. These funds will give private investors access to the same deals that Ardian sources for the world’s biggest institutions. This marks another big step to open our deal flow to more investors.

Not everyone can do evergreen funds

Ardian’s scale, its wide range of investment activities and its leading global position in secondaries and direct investments are key ingredients for success in developing private wealth products.

Ardian’s leading position in secondaries and direct investments highlights a key ingredient for success in evergreen funds. Clients can invest on a monthly cycle. So, in order to deploy their money quickly, it is essential to generate a sustained and diverse flow of large, high-quality deals. “Ardian’s specialization in the largest secondary and direct transactions is a major enabler of our evergreen funds program,” says Erwan Paugam, Head of Private Wealth Solutions. “This is a key point of difference for me: not everyone can do evergreen funds.” With the roll-out of the Ardian Access Series, a broad group of private clients will soon be able to invest in the same deals as our institutional investors. The key difference is that they will do so via US and global evergreen funds. 

The first Ardian Access fund was successfully launched in France in 2023, and three more Access evergreen funds will follow in 2025, comprising US and European private equity and infrastructure funds.

“Secondaries are very well suited to private wealth products and for evergreen funds in particular,” he says. “They offer wide diversification and can generate returns and cash flows quickly since the secondary portfolios that we acquire are relatively mature. In creating the Ardian Access Series, we have retained the most important elements of Ardian’s value proposition. The deal flow and the performance of the underlying assets are the same for all of our investors. But the experience for private wealth clients is different because we have adapted the way they access our deal flow to reflect their needs. 

Ava Mallin, Managing Director of Private Wealth Solutions in the US, says Ardian Access LLC, the US private equity fund, is targeted at people designated as Accredited Investors under US regulation. “There are millions of US investors in this bracket, representing a huge market opportunity, and at the outset Ardian will work with banks, wealth managers and advisory firms to offer the fund to them.”

Similarly, Ardian’s ability to launch these vehicles rests on its work over recent years to adapt the way all its funds are structured. This has ensured that Ardian’s Private Wealth and Customized Solutions clients can invest in the same deal flow as LPs in its flagship funds.

The roll-out of the Ardian Access platform alongside other Private Wealth initiatives signals the beginning of a new chapter for the company. The fund launches will expand Ardian’s presence globally and allow private investors to gain access to a range of opportunities that have until now been reserved for institutional investors and the wealthiest families. Evergreen funds are opening the doors to private markets for a large group of investors and giving them access to the investment expertise Ardian has built over almost three decades.