Accelerating wealth access to private markets, BlackRock has launched an innovative evergreen private markets platform for wealth investors in Europe, which is also accessible to clients in the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
The platform is the industry’s first to provide wealth clients with evergreen, multiple fund exposure to institutional-quality alternative investments under the new European Long-Term Investment Fund (ELTIF) 2.0 framework, helping transform the way investors access private markets.
Investors into the platform will benefit from exposure to a collection of strategies leveraging the new ELTIF 2.0 wrapper across private equity, multi-alternatives, infrastructure, private debt and real estate. The strategies will leverage the deep investment, technology and data expertise, broad market access and whole portfolio capabilities of BlackRock’s private markets franchise, with the initial two funds managed by BlackRock Private Equity Partners and BlackRock Alternative Portfolio Solutions.
The global alternatives market is forecast to exceed $30tn by 2030[2], according to Preqin. Wealth investors are leading the adoption of private markets as they seek portfolios offering exposure to the companies and assets they cannot traditionally access via public markets, and therefore the potential for uncorrelated returns. Research from the BlackRock Investment Institute (BII) suggests that some investors might benefit from portfolio allocations of up to 20% in private markets[3].
Stephen Cohen, Chief Product Officer, BlackRock, commented: “Our goal is to revolutionize access to private markets for wealth clients. By launching this evergreen platform under the ELTIF 2.0 framework, we are breaking new ground in making institutional-quality alternatives accessible to a wider range of investors. This demonstrates our commitment to staying ahead of clients’ investment needs with innovative solutions.”
Innovating access to private markets
Combining the Luxembourg Part II SICAV structure with the ELTIF 2.0 wrapper, the open-ended strategies will be accessible to a much broader range of wealth investors, including mass affluent. Through BlackRock’s innovative platform structure, wealth clients across Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific will be able to invest in institutional-quality private assets through a range of dedicated strategies that share a common structure and operating platform.
The platform launches with two initial funds in private equity and multi-alternatives. BlackRock Private Equity Partners will manage the BlackRock Private Equity Fund (“BPE”), a global diversified private equity portfolio across industry sectors and company stages, targeting buyout and growth opportunities via direct co-investments and secondaries. BlackRock Alternative Portfolio Solutions will manage the Multi-Alternative Growth Fund (“MAG”), a global multi-alternatives portfolio across geographies and sectors, offering exposure to private equity, private credit, real assets and opportunistic investments focused on driving capital growth over the long-term. BlackRock will seek to continue investing in its evergreen platform to expand its range of strategies to include infrastructure, private debt and real estate in due course.
BlackRock is recognized as a leading provider of ELTIFs in the European wealth segment[4], managing ~€1.4bn of client capital across its four existing ELTIF funds as of June 2024. The launch of BlackRock’s evergreen platform further expands its ELTIF offering, providing a broader set of investment solutions that enable a much wider range of clients to access private markets, all within a robust investor protection framework under ELTIF 2.0.
Fabio Osta, Head of the Alternatives Specialists Team in EMEA Wealth, BlackRock, commented: “We are excited to make alternatives much more accessible to a wider range of investors through the launch of our evergreen private markets platform, expanding our range of ELTIFs under the new ELTIF 2.0 framework. Building on BlackRock’s extensive track-record of managing risk and investing across multiple evergreen funds, these launches underscore our ability to bring innovative, client-focused solutions to market. As the fastest-growing segment in asset management, we are well positioned to revolutionize private markets investing to help more people invest better and experience financial wellbeing.”
BlackRock’s innovative evergreen platform facilitates improved access to private markets for individual investors, a sector traditionally reserved for institutional clients. Under the new ELTIF 2.0 regulation, the open-ended structure offers liquidity at periodic intervals, with the 20% liquidity sleeve in each fund managed by BlackRock, promoting effective liquidity and further return optimisation potential. While these new funds are expected to be highly attractive for the established advisory segment, their evergreen structure may also help drive interest for the first time in discretionary portfolio management, the digital wealth segment, unit-linked investments, and additionally institutional investors.
