Billionaire Partners Group founder moves to split family office

URS Wietlisbach, one of the three billionaire founders at Swiss private equity firm Partners Group Holding AG, is carving out an independent unit within the family office that’s managed their fortunes for over a decade, in an early sign of the executive’s succession planning.

The entity at the founders’ PG3 AG firm will be led by Jascha Forster, current chief investment officer of Swiss billionaire Thomas Schmidheiny’s family office Spectrum Value Management, according to people familiar with the matter. 

The move marks the first significant step away from the fully-shared structure that has defined PG3 since it was established by Wietlisbach and co-founders Alfred Gantner and Marcel Erni in 2013.

The trio met while working at Goldman Sachs Group, before making Partners one of the world’s largest private-markets firms, overseeing around 147 billion Swiss francs (S$237 billion) in assets.

PG3 declined to comment, while Forster wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Partners Group has experienced turbulence of late. Earlier this month the firm’s shares fell the most on record after clients pulled funds from at some of its evergreen funds, prompting the firm to cap withdrawals. Year-to-date, the stock is down about 30 per cent. 

The slump has prompted senior management to snap up more than US$30 million of the company’s stock. Gantner has called the decline a “massive overreaction,” while Chairman Steffen Meister said days later that gating funds was “not unusual these days.”

In April, short-selling firm Grizzly Research said it’s betting against Partners Group, alleging as much as 40 per cent of investments were significantly overvalued. Partners Group called the report defamatory and misleading. 

Even amid the tumult, Gantner and Wietlisbach are some of the most successful financiers in Switzerland, with big political clout.

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Gantner helped the Swiss government hash out a lower tariff rate directly with US President Donald Trump, while Wietlisbach is known for his activism around cutting ties with the European Union.

Those efforts have gained plenty of momentum in Switzerland, which on Sunday voted on an initiative to cap its population at 10 million. This would clash with Switzerland’s agreements with the European Union which include the free of movement of people. The vote was rejected.

With the new family office move, Wietlisbach is seeking independence over individual investments, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing a private matter. Both he and Gantner have large families and have been planning for succession, the people said. The three founders are also working on a shareholder agreement designed to govern future decision-making, one person said. 

PG3 had previously managed the wealth and investment activities of the three founders through a common platform. BLOOMBERG