‘Private equity’ can be a daunting term for investors. However, we explore why investing in private equity could become your organisation’s strategic secret weapon.
Diversifying your portfolio and allocating a larger amount to private equity, could be a great solution to meeting your charity investment management needs by taking advantage of illiquidity.
How private equity works:
- Private equity represents share ownership or interest in an entity that is not publicly listed or traded. Investors can access private equity through funds structured either as closed-ended or open-ended
- Closed-ended private equity funds, also known as ‘drawdown vehicles’, involve committing capital upfront, with investors waiting for their committed capital to be called and invested over several years
- Open-ended private equity funds, referred to as ‘evergreen vehicles’, don’t have a fixed term and continue indefinitely. Investors can stay invested for a duration that suits them, with underlying investments typically priced on a monthly basis to balance interests of both buyers and sellers
- In both structures, private equity funds managers acquire companies, add long-term value, then generate returns through recapitalisations, strategic sales or public offerings
- Investing in private equity is a long-term approach, in line with the strategic direction of the firms acquired (typically 10 years), often referred to as ‘patient capital’. This has the ability to generate an illiquidity premium versus public equities
Private equity is often expected to achieve higher returns than public equity markets, making it attractive to large-scale investors looking to solve long-term return requirements. Despite this, many UK charities have not traditionally included private equity within their portfolios due to concerns around lower income yield, illiquidity and increased risk.
However, given the potential return profile and its long-term time nature matching many charities’ perpetual time horizons, our view is that private equity is an asset class that should be considered more broadly across the sector.
A trend prevalent in US endowments has been the increase of alternative investments in portfolios (which includes private equity).
US endowments with AUM ≥ USD1 billion allocate approximately 46 per cent across private equity, hedge funds, and real assets1, a figure which is not reflected across the UK market other than a handful of large organisations.
The ‘illiquidity premium’ is the expected outperformance of private equity over publicly listed equity, due to the value-add initiatives a private equity fund can implement for the investors. As an example of this, since 2016 HSBC Alternative Investments Limited has generated a net internal rate of return of +14.4 per cent for its clients2, outperforming global equity markets by over +4.1 per cent p/a3.
For a charity with a perpetual timeframe, this return profile can be attractive.
PE-backed companies vs. Publicly listed firms4
- Returns – Higher upside potential relative to traditional asset classes driven by patient capital nature
- Access– Significant opportunities available in non-public markets such as Asia “local-for-local” businesses and Technology
- Diversification – Low correlation to traditional long-only assets and lower valuation volatility than other asset classes during crisis periods
- Alignment – Investing alongside managers who have significant portions of their wealth in the same fund creating “skin in the game”
- How much to invest - Understand your long-term return requirement and if you can give up an allocation to short-term income yield
- When to invest - We prefer to invest in a range of funds throughout the years. This way you have consistent and ongoing exposure and this diversifies the portfolio increasingly over time
- How to invest - Large sums of money are no longer required to invest, instead you can now invest directly with private equity managers, who pool your allocation together with other investors to access at lower levels (e.g. USD 250,000 for closed-ended and USD 25,000 for open-ended)
- Who to invest with - Manager selection is key, as you cannot sell the holding. At HSBC we focus on strategies in which we have the highest conviction, selecting what we consider to be the ‘best-in-class’ managers, who should be able to reward you for the illiquidity associated with private equity
1 HSBC AM Alternatives as of November 2025 ↩
2 Represents a blended IRR on all Private Equity investments made on a discretionary basis since 2016 that have posted initial valuation but excludes 2024 and 2025 vintages. IRR is net of all underlying fund fees and expenses, and gross of HSBC management fees. ↩
3 Stronger performance by HSBC AM Alternatives’ discretionary private equity-focused investments vs MSCI AC WI PME, which we consider an appropriate measure of performance (not a benchmark). PME reflects the performance that would have been achieved from buying and selling the MSCI AC WI at the time of every capital call and distribution from January 2016 through to December 2023. ↩
4 World Bank, Statista, Siblis Research. PE-backed company count (excludes VC) vs. domestic firms publicly listed on NYSE and NASDAQ, as of September 2025. ↩