Partners Group's Succession Shuffle Meets a Wind-Down Vote at Its London Arm
Published on 09/10/2026 at 05:10 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Partners Group has spent the past few weeks assembling two very different storylines. One concerns who will run the Swiss asset manager next. The other concerns whether a listed affiliate will keep running at all.
On September 1, the firm confirmed that CEO David Layton will step down at the end of the current year. Roberto Cagnati and Juri Jenkner — whose name appears as Jenker in some reports — will take over as co-CEOs on January 1, 2027. Layton is not leaving the building entirely: he will move into the chief investment officer role.
A softer half-year beneath a record fundraising haul
The handover lands squarely in the middle of a mixed operating picture. First-half 2026 revenue slipped 7% to CHF 1.12 billion, dragged down by performance fees, which collapsed 39% to CHF 216 million. EBITDA declined 9% to CHF 706 million, a margin of 63%, while profit fell 13% to CHF 502 million.
Management fees provided the counterweight, rising 6% to CHF 905 million. Fundraising, meanwhile, set a first-half record of USD 16 billion — up 31% year on year — and assets under management reached USD 186 billion by the end of June, compared with USD 185 billion at the close of 2025.
Costs moved in the right direction too. Operating expenses dropped 5% to CHF 414 million, which the company attributes partly to lower performance-linked personnel costs and productivity gains from deploying AI.
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Guidance for the full year was reaffirmed: capital commitments of USD 26 billion to USD 32 billion, with performance fees expected to account for 20% to 25% of total revenue. That range is a deliberate step down from the roughly one-quarter share they previously represented — a shift toward steadier, fee-based earnings.
The London affiliate's ballot that could end in liquidation
Separately, Partners Group Private Equity Ltd., the London-listed vehicle tied to the parent, is preparing a shareholder vote with unusually high stakes. The proposal would split the share structure into two classes, one of them a "realization" category designed to return capital to investors rather than recycle it.
If demand for those realization shares exceeds 40%, the board intends to seek approval for an orderly liquidation of the entire portfolio, according to Bloomberg. A managed wind-down would mean assets are sold over time and proceeds distributed instead of reinvested — a signal likely to reignite debate over the growth strategy of the wider group.
Deal flow continues regardless
None of this has slowed the investment machine. In early August, Partners Group agreed to acquire a majority stake in AVK Power Solutions, a European supplier of power solutions for data centers, with planned equity investment exceeding USD 1 billion.
At the same time, the firm entered exclusive talks to buy a majority holding in Aroma-Zone from Eurazeo, which would retain a minority stake. The Financial Times put the enterprise value of the French cosmetics maker at around EUR 2 billion.
There is also an exit in motion. At the end of July, Partners Group and other major shareholders agreed to tender roughly 57% of Zabka shares into a takeover offer from Alimentation Couche-Tard. The Canadian retail chain is offering about USD 8.6 billion in total consideration for the Polish retailer, or roughly USD 8.48 per share.
Market reaction and the road ahead
Investors have not been generous. The stock trades at EUR 702.20, down 1.5% on the day and weaker again after the previous session's decline. Over 30 days the loss has reached 10%, and year-to-date the shares are off 34%, leaving them just over 2% above their 52-week low. When the leadership change was announced roughly a week earlier, the stock fell as much as 8.6%.
Cagnati and Jenkner will inherit a portfolio that must be balanced between shrinking performance income and a growing asset base. No analyst commentary on the personnel move or the recent transactions has surfaced so far. What the coming weeks will reveal is how seriously shareholders in the London-listed arm treat the prospect of a portfolio wind-down — and how far that verdict ripples back to the parent.
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