Ardian Helps Canada’s Largest Pensions Exit Buyout Funds

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(Bloomberg) — Ardian is increasingly a buyer of private equity assets from Canadian pension plans, as institutional investors turn to the secondary market to free up cash following a prolonged period of low deal activity. 

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Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec was the first Canadian pension to invest in Paris-based Ardian’s funds, and others in the so-called Maple Eight have since committed to several of the manager’s strategies. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board drummed up around C$2 billion ($1.5 billion) from selling 20 fund stakes to Ardian in 2023, while British Columbia Investment Management Corp. sold about $1 billion of private equity fund stakes in 2024. 

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The $200 billion French asset manager is known for its secondaries strategy along with its direct investments in infrastructure, and buyouts and real estate in Europe. Its private credit strategy represents less than 10% of assets. 

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The firm is now preparing to raise its next secondaries fund after amassing a record $30 billion last year to buy stakes in portfolios of other private asset managers, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Bloomberg News spoke with Vladimir Colas, Ardian’s co-head of secondaries and primaries, about these types of complex transactions and the growth of the private secondary market. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Q: When did you start buying private equity assets from the Maple Eight — and why?

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Colas: Our first transaction with Canadian pension funds was in 2017. And since then, we’ve closed on nine transactions with five of them and have bought a total of $20 billion of stakes in funds from Canadian pensions, many of whom have been repeat sellers. It’s become a really strong business for us, and hence why we opened an office in Canada three years ago.

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Q: What is the pension funds’ mindset today regarding liquidity in private assets, compared to 10 years ago?

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Colas: At the time, the secondary market was almost seen as niche, or as something you’d use only if you were in trouble — for example, if you had liquidity issues or if you had a regulation issue that forced you to sell. Otherwise, many limited partners just assumed they would hold onto their private equity. 

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Now, every limited partner is thinking about the secondary market. There are a few reasons. First, it’s a growing part of their allocation so they want to generate liquidity, and second, because geopolitics are playing a role. When things change every three months in terms of where it’s interesting to invest, you want to be able to be nimble, to sell some exposure and to quickly reinvest somewhere else. 

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Finally, distributions have been slow in the last few years, so some LPs have decided to create their own liquidity. For many of them, it’s to keep investing in private equity.

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If you go a few years back, several Canadian pension funds decided to move more toward direct investing, less toward third-party funds. At the time, that led to quite a few sales of Canadian pensions that — instead of waiting for distributions to come back to then redeploy in directs — they said: “Hey, I’m going to sell several billions of my funds right away in order to put in place my direct investment strategy.” And we see some Canadian pensions today that are not necessarily doing the reverse, but rebalancing a little bit between funds and directs as opposed to being 80% in one.