Private equity likes the idea of private wealth. It likes the scale and the promise of a new capital base just as institutional fundraising slows.

What it is less comfortable with is what private wealth forces it to confront: the issue of whether complexity can really be simplified without being mis-sold.

That tension sat at the heart of a discussion moderated by Guy Lodewyckx of Amundi, with speakers from Schroders Capital, Partners Capital, and EQT. Beneath the familiar language of access and innovation, the panellists were grappling with a harder issue: how far private equity can be opened up without changing what it fundamentally is.

Joe Basrawy of Partners Capital framed the starting point plainly. His firm’s core clients are ultra-high-net-worth individuals with long horizons, but even they have shifted their preferences. Evergreen structures, he said, answered a demand for “simplicity, the lack of an unfunded commitment,” as well as “flexibility to our capital” and certain tax advantages. What surprised his team was not that smaller investors wanted access, but that even sophisticated ones did.

Basrawy was careful not to romanticise retail participation. He said there was “no sort of insurmountable reason” retail investors should be excluded from private equity, but only if education and expectations were set correctly. Liquidity, he stressed, must be understood as conditional, not assumed.

Paul Lamacraft of Schroders Capital pushed that point further. Education, he said, was “absolutely critical,” warning that the worst outcome would be investors entering semi-liquid products with false assumptions about risk or redemption. His description of Schroders’ approach to wealth channels was notably restrictive. Investors must demonstrate “a level of sophistication and understanding” before gaining access. 

If Partners Capital and Schroders were talking about adapting private equity to new investors, EQT’s William Vettorato was making the opposite argument: that the product should not adapt at all. EQT’s entry into private wealth, he said, was about delivering “the same institutional rigour and institutional content” rather than designing something fundamentally different. “Democratisation is very much within quotation marks,” he added, emphasising that accessibility mattered, but dilution of standards did not.

This difference in philosophy runs through the debate on evergreen funds. Vettorato described evergreen structures as offering accessibility and flexibility, especially for investors who lack the resources to evaluate closed-end funds on their own. But he was clear that flexibility cuts both ways. For institutions, evergreen funds help manage pacing and exposure; for newer investors, they offer a controlled entry point — not liquidity on demand.

Basrawy offered perhaps the most nuanced assessment of performance. He rejected the idea that evergreen funds must underperform closed-end vehicles, arguing that tax efficiency, compounding, and professional cash management could add one to two percentage points for taxable investors. But he was equally explicit about the risks that are unique to the structure: valuation policy, investor behaviour, and the ability of managers to control inflows and outflows. “You’re opening yourself up to the risk of the behaviour of other investors,” he said.

In other words, evergreen funds shift risk rather than remove it.

Where the panel became most revealing was on portfolio construction. Schroders and Partners Capital both emphasised co-investments and GP-led transactions as ways to deploy capital efficiently and reduce fee drag. EQT rejected the multi-manager model entirely. Vettorato described EQT’s evergreen offering as closer to “an ETF on our investment platform,” with investors underwriting the firm itself rather than a rotating set of external managers. Selection bias, he argued, is minimised by owning the full investment process.

The contrast exposed a deeper divide. Some managers see private wealth as a distribution challenge. Others see it as a test of identity.

Regulation, particularly ELTIF 2, hovered in the background. The panel broadly agreed that it represents progress, but no one treated it as a solution. Structure alone does not fix misaligned expectations. Education, governance, and honesty about liquidity matter more.

What emerged from the discussion was not a triumphal story about “private equity for all,” but a more restrained conclusion. Private wealth is coming into private markets, but only the firms willing to draw hard lines — on who can invest, how capital is managed, and what liquidity really means — are likely to navigate the transition without reputational damage.

Private equity may want private wealth. Whether it is truly prepared to be as transparent as private wealth will eventually demand remains a question to be answered.

by Andreea Melinti

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