EQT Ranked Largest Non-U.S. Manager In Inaugural Private Markets 100
EQT was ranked the world’s largest private markets manager outside the U.S.
- EQT ranked largest private markets firm outside the U.S. and fourth largest globally.
EQT has been ranked the world’s fourth largest private markets manager with $204bn raised between 2021 and 2025, in the inaugural PEI Group’s Private Markets 100. The firm tops the leaderboard for non U.S.-based managers.
PEI Group has published the first Private Markets 100, which ranks the world’s largest managers by capital raised across private equity, real estate, infrastructure, private credit and secondaries. The 100 firms raised $5.74tn over the five years, which PEI notes is more than Germany’s annual economic output.
“We are the only firm in the top 10 with headquarters outside North America, and the only one in the top 20 without a private credit business,” says EQT Chief Executive Per Franzén.
“We got here by staying focused on a global, diversified set of strategies where we believe we can create real alpha for clients, and by earning the trust of the investors who committed their capital to us.”
A market that has grown with caveats
All of the PEI Group rankings that feed the Private Markets 100 list recorded higher five-year totals this year, the first time that has happened simultaneously.
The picture is not uniform, though. Distributions have slowed sharply, and capital is gravitating to the largest managers: the top ten firms account for roughly a quarter of all fund raising. For managers, that makes fundraising more demanding. For investors, it raises questions about how concentrated their manager exposure should be.
Largest capital raisers 2021-2025
PEI’s central finding is that the single-strategy specialist is disappearing. Sixteen of the top 100 raised capital across all five strategies, and 17 of the top 20 operate in at least four. Much of this has been driven by acquisitions, including the EQT purchase of Coller Capital, which completed in August, after the Private Markets 100 ranking was created - the combined capital raising abilities of EQT and Coller Capital would have put EQT third in the ranking.
For investors, this means access to more strategies through fewer relationships. It doesn’t make depth of expertise less valuable. PEI points out that in private equity and real estate, mid-sized and regional specialists still take a meaningful share of capital.
Where capital is heading
Infrastructure accounted for around $870bn of the total raised. PEI noted a surge in infrastructure fund raising and pointed to the energy transition and digital infrastructure, now accelerated by AI-related investment, as the main drivers, alongside infrastructure’s appeal as a defensive asset with stable, inflation-protected cashflows.
Likewise, PEI Group noted strong appetite for secondaries strategies where annual capital raising has risen six-fold over the past decade. The media firm expected this pace to continue given the acquisition of secondaries strategies by blue chip managers.
Investors are looking for resilience in a more volatile world, and managers have a responsibility to deploy that capital in ways that deliver it.
“Scale only matters if it is put to work. It lets us invest in our capabilities, attract the best people and deliver for clients,” said Franzén.
ThinQ by EQT: A publication where private markets meet open minds. Join the conversation – [email protected]
Exclusive News and Insights Every Month
Sign up to subscribe to the EQT newsletter.