Private equity and credit firms have elbowed their way into everything from real estate to corporate lending. Now they’re cracking open Britain’s growing pension-transfer market.
A partner of U.S. buyout giant TPG and Disruptive Capital Finance, owned by the Truell family office, are backing so-called superfunds that are poised to enter the business of taking over costly pension funds from companies struggling to keep them going. Insurers, which dominate the market, are expected to do more than 30 billion pounds ($38.7 billion) of transfer deals this year, according to consultants Lane Clark & Peacock.
Investors desperate for yield in the world of negative interest rates are increasingly turning to private equity firms in search of returns. This has fueled the PE industry’s expansion beyond the leveraged-buyout deals that remain their stock-in-trade. In the U.K., superfunds are awaiting approval of their debut deals from a regulator that’s pushing for consolidation.
By Benjamin Robertson and Lucca De Paoli for Bloomberg. Read the full article here