STRATEGY

OverviewDifferentiated
Investment Strategy
Fund portfolio
secondaries
GP-led secondariesesg

Since the establishment of Glendower in 2017, the team has been solely and entirely dedicated to secondaries. Glendower believes that specialization offers a distinctive advantage and reduces potential conflicts and distractions.

Glendower pursues a distinctive two-pronged strategy targeting LP fund portfolios and GP-led transactions to capitalize on the secondary market evolution.

Differentiated Investment Strategy

  • Seek to mitigate non-market risk through diversification across portfolios
  • Actively manage sell / roll-on fund restructurings and public markets exposure
  • Limit impact of FX volatility through active hedging program
  • Purchase fund interests at a discount to ensure downside protection
  • Strategy has led to a minimal Loss Ratio for the SOF Program
  • Leverage used as a recycling tool vs. driver of returns
  • Attractive assets managed by quality managers
  • Detailed bottom-up pricing analysis
  • Value creation through in-depth fundamental analysis vs. deal structuring
  • Diverse sourcing channels and disciplined selection process
  • Reduced unfunded exposure limits blind pool risk

Fund portfolio secondaries

Glendower has an operational scale with over 90 professionals, an in-house database of 1,500 funds, and over 450 fund managers. Glendower systematically underwrites $5 million to $1 billion funds’ portfolios and single fund positions, providing comprehensive solutions for mature portfolios, complex private feeder portfolios, and difficult-to-value assets.

  • Mature portfolios, requiring operational capabilities to transact on older dated, very fragmented portfolios
  • Single LP interests with differentiated views and manager access
  • Portfolios with significant public exposure requiring access to investment banking platforms, including brokerage and hedging abilities

GP-led secondaries

Glendower has developed a reputation for being a reliable partner of choice for fund managers and investors due to its and its principals' long-standing experience in executing challenging transactions. Glendower underwrites GP-led transactions ranging from $100 million to $500 million, including assets sales, fund recapitalizations, strip sales, and spinouts.

  • Glendower's principals have actively invested in manager-led secondaries since 2007, completing over 55 deals for $3.8 billion
  • Partner of choice for PE managers and investors thanks to experience as lead underwriter of transactions with mid-market managers
  • Expertise in acquiring difficult to value assets using proprietary pricing and structuring capabilities to underwrite challenging transactions across adjacent asset classes

ESG

As a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, Glendower’s investment philosophy is based on the belief that the underlying value of the investments is determined by their long-term fundamental prospects, including their forward-looking attitude towards environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) aspects. At Glendower, factoring sustainability risks into its investment process helps play a part in managing risk, driving returns, and creating new investment opportunities.  ESG risks, whether material or likely to be material, could substantially impact investment performance (to varying degrees across companies, sectors, regions, asset classes, and through time) and, ultimately, the risk-adjusted returns generated.

Glendower incorporates the consideration of ESG factors into its investment decision-making process and during the ongoing ownership of funds and portfolio companies. As part of its due diligence process, Glendower looks to understand whether a general partner or, in the case of a direct investment, the company’s management seeks to identify, monitor, and manage ESG risks and opportunities within their portfolio, or company, respectively.

Glendower's investment team, supported by the ESG Working Group, is responsible for conducting the ESG due diligence as part of the investment process and documenting any ESG findings in each investment memorandum.  Ultimate ESG scrutiny and decision-making are the responsibility of the relevant Glendower fund’s investment committee. Accordingly, Glendower's ESG philosophy brings the entire platform together, with the deal team and the investment committee taking ultimate responsibility for the ESG analysis and ongoing monitoring.

Glendower is an active owner and, where possible, seeks opportunities to partner with the underlying managers to help drive improvements in its portfolio investments.  Therefore, as a part of its regular investment monitoring process (which addresses both ESG matters and other performance metrics), the investment team will review and document each underlying investment’s ESG progress annually.  

ESG considerations are integrated into Glendower’s investment decision-making process from when an investment is first considered, throughout the life of that investment, and until its disposal. For Glendower, ESG is one of a number of factors that it considers holistically when determining key drivers of financial performance.  

For the avoidance of doubt, no fund or other investment vehicle managed or advised by Glendower Capital seeks to promote environmental or social characteristics or has sustainable investment as its objective.