Partners Group Holding AG #
By Grizzly Research April 29, 2026, 3:00 a.m. EDT Partners Group Holding AG (“Partners Group”, “PGHN”) is a Swiss-listed alternative asset manager with approximately US$184.9 billion in assets under management. Partners Group is known for pioneering evergreen funds, which contribute almost half the company’s revenues. We dug through the capital structure, underlying holdings, and national filings of Partner’s Group’s biggest evergreen funds, most prominently its Master Fund. We compared our findings to industry peers and consulted with industry experts, former Partners Group employees, and finance professors who expressed grave concern about our findings. One professor commented after reviewing our analysis carefully that the situation is “worse than Wirecard”. We found numerous instances where the Master Fund’s valuations did not reconcile with the reality of the underlying businesses. We estimate close to 40% of the evergreen funds’ investments might be severely mismarked. The Master Fund’s largest Asia-Pacific holding reports 50 million fewer shares of its key investment to the SEC than it reports to the Hong Kong Companies Registry. Partners Group’s Master Fund marked up a Russian pharmaceutical equity investment during the same reporting window in which the Russian state seized the asset by Putin’s decree. Often the timing of the investment, the financial performance of the operating companies, and valuation marks seem not to square up. These include a 176.9% markup on a Swedish data-center operator whose revenue fell 18% and operating losses widened 42% over the markup period; an 857.8% common equity markup on a Portuguese biocontrol group whose revenue grew 2.9% year-over-year; and a position whose common equity jumped 383% in 26 days. When we were able to back out valuation multiples relatively reliably, we arrived at the conclusion that Partners Group applies multiples for its own valuation that are far in excess of what industry comparisons suggest. Through financial gymnastics, Partners Group arrives at effective valuations that are sometimes more than twice as much as our independently commissioned valuation experts suggested. Across the Master Fund’s direct-debt book, reported principal balances moved in ways inconsistent with standard accounting. In many instances, principal value and fair value metrices moved not only by hundreds of percent and in different directions, which is very untypical for a senior loan. Partners Group tells investors its private-credit software exposure is “less than half the industry average.” We estimate its actual exposure in the available sample at 32%, which is above the industry average and more than heavily-criticized peers such as Blue Owl Capital. Importantly, we do not see the same irregular valuation patterns we saw in Partners Group in the filings of its largest US and European peers. We see attention to Partners Group’s evergreen funds and their valuation marks as a severe risk to the company’s fund-raising ability and long-term financial health.
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Updated by Steve, 2026-04-29