Released last week by eVestment, Consultant Outlooks: 2021 is an aggregated look the capital markets assumptions compiled from six industry consultants. Aon, Callan, Meketa, NEPC, Verus, and Wilshire. Sourced from eVestment Market Lens from December 2020 through February 2021, the data offers a look into what these six top consultants expect to see in the private markets.
Working with private markets consultants undoubtedly adds an extra layer of time and effort to the fundraising process for fund managers, but the fact remains that winning the approval of these gatekeepers is key to cultivating relationships with many of the top institutional investors in the market.
2020 proved to be a mixed bag for the private markets in terms of fundraising. While some asset classes thrived, others struggled mightily to deal with the impact of the pandemic. Within private debt, so called dislocation funds saw a surge in interest as LPs looked for opportunistic investment opportunities.
According to the year-end edition of our eVestment Private Markets Monthly Monitor, private debt saw $33.7 billion in reported commitments from 79 different public pension plans in 2020, a 31% increase from the segment’s final 2019 figure. The 2020 total was comprised of 319 commitments representing a 46% increase compared 2019.
Our newly published report, detailing commitments reported by public pension plans to private funds through 2020, uncovers that 120 plans reported commitments of $83.1 billion to private equity funds in the year. The total represents a 20% increase from the 2019 full year figure and shows that institutional investors were able to adapt to digital due diligence and push forward with commitment pacing plans.
New data from eVestment Private Markets: Published February 9, 2021, the year-end edition of the eVestment Private Markets Monthly Monitor found that public plans investors committed $154.6 billion to private funds in 2020. The amounted to a 2% increase from the previous year’s mark and indicate that pension plans were not afraid to put capital to work during the pandemic.
Last year a staggering 74% of CFO respondents in EY’s 2020 Global Private Equity Survey cited “employee productivity and engagement” as their top talent management priority. These response and the broader survey, which was released before the COVID-19 crisis became a global pandemic, offer insight into what CFOs hoped to accomplish in 2020.
A change of government leadership in the United States almost always means an accompanying change in economic policy and initiatives. At the portfolio company-level, private markets fund managers are deeply entrenched in virtually all sectors of the economy, so one way or another, new administrations mean an impact on investor portfolios.
In what has been a bewildering, enigmatic, and difficult year, “Where to next?” will be the question on the minds of many emerging private equity managers as we move into 2021. While the year was full of countless challenges for everyone, in terms of fundraising in the private markets, 2020 could be described by some GPs as, “pretty good.”
In an increasingly crowded market, where performance is only one of many factors for an LP to consider, are GPs successfully differentiating themselves from their peers when it comes to positioning and pitching?