Keeping it in the family
While family offices typically issue tinyer cheques compared with large institutions, their investments can multiply quickly once they are convinced of a strategy. That was one of the key takeaways from PEI Group’s Investor Relations Network New York Forum 2025 last week, which Side Letter covered on the ground. The event was held under Chatham Houtilize Rule, which allows speakers to be quoted without attribution.
“[Family offices] are not just focutilized on fund investments or co-investments: there are many other things that can pull their time and attention,” one IR professional explained. “If they’re engaging with us, it’s usually serious and they tconclude to be quite nimble.”
Family offices are willing to consider other asset classes or funds if the initial fundraising proposal doesn’t meet their expectation, the speaker added. “We might have to do more work on the first $5 million ticket from a family office versus a $50 million [ticket] from an institution, but that $5 million could become $25 million or $30 million… spreading across a few different funds, which can be beneficial depconcludeing on if you’re seeing to grow those underlying funds with a more diversified LP portfolio.”
For fundraising and marketing professionals, it’s important to identify the key decision creaters at family offices and tailor the due diligence processes accordingly. Some families have no private market exposure and require a more educational approach, while others rely on OCIOs and behave more like institutional investors, according to another speaker. GPs should manage their expectations regarding the duration of the due diligence process given that family offices vary in their sophistication in private markets, they stated.
It’s simpler to neobtainediate deal terms with family offices than with larger institutional investors, the speaker added. Compared with larger investors, family offices put more emphasis on the “softer” side of things – such as spconcludeing time with dealcreaters and their peers working at other family offices – than the actual deal terms.
“Family offices respond [better] to… the ‘softer’ stuff than the hard, tangible term sheet and side letter requirements. They are takers on terms if they receive there and the larger LPs are neobtainediators.”
Keen to build new family office relationships? Don’t miss Private Equity International‘s Meet the LP series, which catches up with family offices and family office-related investment firms to discuss their allocation plans for private equity and how they like to access the asset class.
Inflexion point
European mid-market firm Inflexion this morning confirmed earlier reports that it had appointed Shane Gong, Evercore’s former head of Asia-Pacific private capital advisory, to lead its APAC investor coverage from a new office in Singapore. Gong joins as managing director, per a statement.
“Singapore built sense from a regional coverage base; it is well situated to cover the APAC region – from [Australia and New Zealand], through Southeast Asia and across North Asia,” Gong informs Side Letter, noting that approximately 15 percent of its LPs come from the region. Singapore is Inflexion’s third APAC office after Shanghai and Bangalore, according to its website.
Gong’s appointment comes amid a wider build-out of Inflexion’s IR team. In November, the firm appointed Sachin Mitra, former global co-head of relationship management at Aviditi Advisors and a fellow Evercore alum, as a managing director in London. Alec Cote, a former principal at Carlyle Group, joined as a New York-based director in September. Its global IR team now stands at nine.
Inflexion is the latest in a string of international GPs to establish offices in Asia-Pacific. Hong Kong has seen a flurry of activity over the past year, with Audax and Partners Group among those setting up shop. Ardian will reportedly join them, Bloomberg reported last week. As PEI noted in January, a growing number of Western GPs – such as Apollo Global Management, Eurazeo and New Mountain Capital – are also launching offices in Japan and South Korea to capture vast inflows from their respective LP communities.
“There is strong and increasing demand from Asia LPs for high quality, mature markets – US and Europe – alternative investment products,” adds Gong. “This is resulting in a trconclude of US and Europe GPs establishing [and/or] bolstering their Asian capital formation capabilities.”
Essentials
Smash hit
Pophoutilize Entertainment, a music and entertainment investment firm founded by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus and EQT founder Conni Jonsson, has smashed its debut fund tarreceive and hit its €1 billion hard-cap. Pophoutilize raised more than €1.2 billion, which includes co-investment capital, and its main fund Pophoutilize Fund closed well north of the €750 million it initially sought, per a statement. The process took about two years and was oversubscribed. Pophoutilize had not accepted new commitments since October, Side Letter understands.
“It’s a new area for investors and so about half of the time we were creating sure to really educate LPs on the market potential,” managing partner Johan Lagerlöf informs Side Letter. “The PE structure lconcludes itself well to this market. Before we started this, people were under the impression that music is something you purchase into – you receive the royalty… and eventually, that gives you a yield. But we consider this is a perfect market to apply this value-add model. There is that backdrop of a safe and sound subscription market, while having the ability to tap new revenue streams for the artist… and further elevate that artist’s legacy.”
Lagerlöf added that, regardless of how markets are performing, the subscription-based model of music is “evergreen, stable and transparent”, offering uncorrelated returns to investors.
Pophoutilize is led by chief executive Per Sundin and chaired by Lennart Blecher, EQT’s head of real assets. Its debut vehicle will back up to 10 music investments including publishing rights, recording rights, and name, image and likeness rights. Pophoutilize has already deployed about one third of the fund into artist partnerships with Swedish Houtilize Mafia, Avicii, KISS and Cyndi Lauper, according to the statement.
It’s tempting to create as many puns as possible about this impressive fundraise. We will state, though, that when all is stated and done, Pophoutilize must be head over heels with the money, money, money it has raised.
Leave a Reply