For many investors, accessing the private equity market can be challenging. Unlike public markets, where thousands of listed companies can be bought and sold relatively easily, many of the most attractive private companies are accessible only through established private equity networks. This is where manager diversification and scale can matter.
In our latest short video interview with HarbourVest Global Private Equity (HVPE), we explore how its relationship with more than 675 private equity managers provides access to a broad range of investment opportunities across global private markets.
Investing through a large network of private equity managers can provide exposure to companies, sectors and investment opportunities that may otherwise be difficult for individual investors to access. HVPE benefits from HarbourVest’s extensive global private markets network, providing access to a broad range of established and emerging private equity managers.
Rather than relying on a single private equity manager’s investment strategy or deal flow, this approach provides exposure across hundreds of managers, thousands of companies and multiple investment strategies and geographies.
That breadth can be an important source of diversification. Private equity managers have different areas of expertise. Some specialise in technology and high-growth businesses. Others focus on established companies, healthcare, industrials, consumer businesses or specific geographical markets. They also operate at different stages of the investment cycle, from venture capital and growth equity through to buyouts and other private market strategies.
By investing across a large number of managers, an investor can potentially access a much broader range of investment approaches than would be possible through a single manager. It also reduces reliance on the investment decisions and performance of any one manager.
In other words, diversification isn’t just about owning lots of companies. It’s also about diversifying the people selecting those companies. Access that individual investors may struggle to achieve
One of the attractions of private equity is the breadth of businesses available outside public markets.
However, accessing those opportunities directly can require substantial capital, specialist knowledge, established relationships and the ability to commit to private market investments over the long term.
A global private equity platform can help overcome some of those barriers by bringing together a large network of managers and investment opportunities within a single investment vehicle.
For investors, this can mean access to a much broader private equity universe than they could realistically build themselves. The scale of HarbourVest’s network is important because private equity is fundamentally a relationship-driven market.
Having relationships with hundreds of managers can provide visibility across different parts of the market and help identify opportunities across geographies, sectors and stages of company development. For HVPE investors, the result is a portfolio designed to provide broad exposure to global private markets rather than a concentrated bet on a handful of private equity managers.
In our latest interview, we explore how HarbourVest’s extensive manager network works, why manager diversification matters and how scale can help provide investors with access to a broad range of private equity opportunities.
Watch the film
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