Neuberger Berman has made global private equity offerings more accessible to eligible retail and professional investors by introducing the NB Direct Private Equity Fund 2024 and the NB Global Private Equity Access Fund.
Effective from 13 March 2024, the fund name NB Direct Private Equity Fund 2023 ELTIF changed to NB Direct Private Equity Fund 2024.
With fundraising launched in March 2023 and open for subscriptions until December 2024, the NB Direct Private Equity Fund 2024 delivers a strategy consistent with prior vintages and aims to offer investors broad diversification with over 30 different positions through direct co-investments across various geographies, industries, enterprise value sizes and value creation strategies in a closed ended structure.
A new feature of this vintage is the Article 8 designation under the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). The minimum investment required for most share classes is €25,000.
Driven by the network of relationships across the global NB Private Markets platform, co-investment deal flow examined by the investment team averaged more than 11 deals per week in 2023, versus an average of eight deals per week over the prior three calendar years. This volume continues to enable the team to take a highly selective approach to building a diversified portfolio of co-investments alongside leading private equity managers.
Launched in December 2022 for professional and institutional investors, the NB Global Private Equity Access Fund provides direct exposure to private companies in a semi-liquid evergreen structure, focused on co-investments with a minority allocation to secondary investments. The Fund offers a simple, minimum subscription of €10,000, and redemption process with opportunities to invest and redeem on a monthly basis.
The NB Global Private Equity Access Fund also delivers a range of regular reporting documents on strategy, portfolio, and holdings via its website, providing timely transparency to its investors. The team evaluates highly attractive private equity investment opportunities alongside experienced and well-resourced lead managers, with a particular focus on less cyclical, more resilient, and market leading businesses.
José Luis González Pastor, one of the senior investment professionals leading both funds, said: “In recent years, the experience for public market investors was volatile with high inflation, a global pandemic and increases in interest rates to levels not seen in more than a decade. Within private equity, the journey was smoother, reinforcing the core advantages of private equity of strong historical returns by outperforming public markets over long periods of time, lower volatility, and diversification benefits.
The record-high dry powder reserves in 2023 rose to $2.59 trillion, suggesting potential for significant private equity activity as values slowly recover and conditions improve. We anticipate the level of interest and engagement from clients will continue to increase, as regulation changes and new funds launch into the private equity space.”
José Cosio, head of global intermediary (ex US), said: ‘‘Demand for private market strategies has remained strong in 2024, as investors continue to search for portfolio diversification and sources of long term robust returns. The deep expertise of Neuberger Berman’s global private equity team has ensured a continuous pipeline of co-investment opportunities for our clients, a trend we see continuing.”