Ardian raises $10bn for latest fund-of-funds

The fund-of-funds held its first close in December last year on $3.5bn.

According to Ardian, the impressive sum is the largest ever raised for this type of fund-of-funds.

The final close of Ardian Fund-of-Funds 6 comes two years after Ardian raised $8bn for its fifth-generation fund-of-funds, back when the firm was still the private equity unit of insurer Axa and known as Axa Private Equity.

Investors
The fund-of-funds' major LPs comprise pension funds, government agencies and family offices from Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia.

Around 40% of the fund-of-funds' major LPs are based in the US, while 9% come from Europe and 21% hail from the Middle East and Asia.

Investments
Of the $10bn raised for the fund-of-funds, $9bn will be deployed on secondaries deals in the buyout and growth capital space, while the remainder will be used by Ardian for primary commitments in private equity funds.

Since the start of 2014, Ardian's sixth fund-of-funds has deployed more than $2bn over three secondary transactions, including the acquisition of buyout and growth portfolios from a financial institution for $600m.

At the beginning of this year, Ardian committed €30m to the second fund raised by Italian infrastructure investor Fondi Italiani per la Infrastrutture (F2i), bringing the vehicle's total at the time to €740m.

In December of last year, Ardian acquired Bank of America Merrill Lynch's interest as a sponsor of F2i and acquired an interest in F2i's first fund. The total commitment of €150m comprised a 9.9% stake in F2i's share capital and 8.1% of the total commitments in F2i's first fund.

People
Vincent Gombault is a managing partner and the head of funds-of-funds and private debt at Ardian.

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• Topics
• Fund-of-funds
• Secondaries
• France
• Ardian (formerly Axa PE)