Made more accessible through evergreen funds and secondaries, private markets are drawing growing interest from Swiss investors. Carlos Arias and Francesco di Valmarana discuss these changes, along with clients’ evolving expectations and the opportunities emerging in private equity, infrastructure and private debt.
How would you describe Pantheon's positioning, and what does it offer Swiss investors in particular?
Carlos Arias. We have been investing in private markets for close to 45 years and today manage approximately $84bn of discretionary assets (as of March 31, 2026). We invest in private equity, infrastructure and private credit through primaries, secondaries, and co-investments, in full alignment with the managers we back as partners rather than potential competitors.
For Swiss investors, three things tend to resonate. The first is secondaries, where we were early movers in infrastructure, private credit, and private equity. The second is our 35 year track record in managing evergreen funds, long before the current wave of interest. The third is our approach to leverage that is generally quite conservative. This year we launched an unlevered version of our infrastructure secondaries strategy specifically for the Swiss market, and it has been particularly well received by the institutional market.
How is the appetite of Swiss professional and private wealth investors for private markets changing?
Carlos Arias. Appetite is growing on both sides of the market. Private banks and wealth managers are building out their private markets offerings, and regulatory change has given pension funds more room to invest. But demand is also becoming more discerning. Swiss investors are sophisticated, and as the market matures, they are becoming more selective.
Access points are also evolving. Evergreen funds are increasingly seen as a “must-have” for banks, independent wealth managers, and multi-family offices, and banks are now extending private markets beyond their ultra-high-net-worth clients to high-net-worth and affluent investors. Private equity remains the anchor, but infrastructure is gaining ground quickly. Across the board, there is a clear shift toward strategies that return cash sooner, which is why secondaries are attracting so much attention.
What do investors most need to understand about evergreen structures before they invest, for example how liquidity works and what to look for when selecting a manager?
Carlos Arias. The most important concept to understand is that evergreen does not mean liquidity on demand. The underlying assets are still private and illiquid, so liquidity is limited by design and should never be considered as guaranteed. Treat a commitment into an evergreen fund as a 5-10 year holding, not as a cash substitute. Most funds offer quarterly redemptions, typically capped at around 5% of net asset value per quarter. Gates, which restrict redemptions when requests exceed those limits, are often seen as a warning sign, which is not necessarily the case. The gates are in place to protect the remaining investors in the fund from forced sales at potentially damaging prices.
The first source of liquidity should be the portfolio itself, through regular distributions, which is why strategies such as secondaries and co-investments, with their shorter duration and earlier cash flows, suit these structures so well.
When selecting a manager, I would look for a long evergreen track record because managing an evergreen vehicle is very different from managing a traditional closed-ended drawdown fund. Investors should also look closely at how assets are valued, how fees are calculated, and whether the manager can keep fundraising and deployment in balance. Too much uninvested cash drags on returns, while deploying too quickly erodes quality.
How are private markets managers adapting the way they serve wealth clients and their advisers?
Carlos Arias. The biggest change over the past decade has been in access. Secondaries, evergreen funds, listed private market vehicles, and wrappers designed for private markets investors, such as ELTIFs, SICAVs or life insurance policies have made an asset class that was once largely reserved for institutions more accessible. With these products, minimum investments are typically lower and products are increasingly structured for local markets.
Distribution has shifted as well. Private banks are now the central channel, and private markets managers are building local coverage teams to serve them properly. Private markets managers are putting much more into training, content, investor friendly reporting, and more interactive educational content such as webinars and events. In our view, the managers who succeed with private wealth will be those who treat it as a long-term relationship rather than a distribution exercise.
Where do you see the most compelling opportunities in private markets today, and how do secondaries fit into that?
Francesco di Valmarana. The current dislocation in private markets, driven by higher interest rates, inflation, and AI, creates substantial risks but also significant opportunities for managers positioned to act on them. In private equity, slower distributions have made fundraising harder, which means less competition for deals, particularly in the mid-market, and higher rates are pushing corporates to sell non-core businesses. In infrastructure, AI and the build-out of data centers are driving a boom, while conflict from Ukraine to the Strait of Hormuz has made the energy transition a strategic imperative. Private credit continues to benefit as banks step back from lending.
Secondaries can offer the ability, across all three asset classes, to purchase assets with the benefit of higher visibility, shorter duration, and potential discounts. Secondary buyers are able to re-underwrite the original investment theses, often with the benefit of several years of operational and financial data. Lastly, the circumstances that lead a vendor to sell a private markets commitment in the secondary market usually are such that the buyer has a stronger hand in negotiations and is able to demand a liquidity discount relative to the fair market value.
How are secondaries evolving across private equity, infrastructure, and private credit, and what is driving growth in each?
Francesco di Valmarana. Twenty years ago, secondaries were a niche. In 2025, more than $200bn of transactions came to market. The traditional LP-led deal, in which an investor sells its stake in a fund, is now a routine portfolio management tool, used to rebalance exposure, reduce the number of manager relationships, or free up capital for the next fund.
The more recent innovation has been in GP-led transactions, where managers use secondary capital to hold on to their best assets for longer. A decade ago, these were a backwater; today they account for roughly half the market. Each asset class uses them differently. In private equity, single-asset continuation vehicles have become a credible alternative to a sale, allowing managers to keep backing their winners. In infrastructure, they can give investors access to high-quality assets that would never otherwise come to market. In private credit, they help bridge the gap between fund lives and extended loan terms. I expect the secondary market to keep growing at least as fast as private markets themselves.
Evergreen funds provide optionality for liquidity in a historically illiquid asset class. How should that liquidity be managed in practice?
Francesco di Valmarana. Liquidity has to be managed from two directions: what investors expect, and what the manager builds. On the investor side, education is essential.
But most of the responsibility sits with the manager. The first line of defence is the investor base. Diversification matters as much among investors as it does in the portfolio: if too many investors share the same profile and needs, they are likely to head for the exit at the same time, and that is how a run on a fund begins. The second is the portfolio itself. A well-designed evergreen fund should generate a steady stream of organic cash flow, and secondaries play a central role here because they can spread exposure across vintages and return capital earlier.
How do you see evergreen solutions changing private markets investing over the next few years?
Francesco di Valmarana. Evergreens could become a natural home for long-lived assets. Because they have no fixed end date, they allow investors to hold potentially stable and profitable assets for the long term. That makes them a good fit for infrastructure, and for companies that are highly profitable but not necessarily high-growth, which, in our view, the stock market tends to overlook.
We are also beginning to see larger managers use evergreen vehicles as an alternative to public markets, offering access to their portfolios through structures more similar to mutual funds or exchange-traded funds than to closed-ended funds. That brings private markets within reach of a much broader group of investors.