UniCredit to supply rich purchasers Blackstone’s non-public fairness fund

MILAN (Reuters) -Italian financial institution UniCredit stated on Wednesday it was widening its partnership with Blackstone (NYSE:BX) to start out providing its wealthier purchasers a personal fairness fund, an asset class usually reserved for skilled buyers.

UniCredit first partnered with the world’s largest various asset supervisor in July final yr, by making Blackstone’s European non-public credit score fund accessible to purchasers of its wealth administration enterprise.

UniCredit stated it could now additionally provide its prospects the Blackstone Non-public Fairness Methods Fund (BXPE), an actively managed, semi-liquid, open-ended various funding fund.

The brand new fund requires a minimal funding of 100,000 euros ($105,000).

Underneath Italian guidelines, various investments similar to this may account at most for 10% of a person’s total wealth beneath administration, so to put money into it an individual would want to have at the least 1 million euros in wealth beneath administration.

Usually non-public fairness investments are carried out by way of close-ended funds which repay contributors solely after plenty of years.

The BXPE permits non-professional buyers to get publicity to Blackstone’s non-public fairness investments.

“We now have already noticed important curiosity from particular person buyers in Italy trying to diversify their funding portfolios into asset lessons that had been as soon as unique to institutional buyers,” Andrea Valeri, chairman of Blackstone Italy, stated in a press release.

Drawing on his lengthy expertise at Swiss financial institution UBS, UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel has targeted UniCredit’s enterprise on fee-earning actions similar to wealth administration that minimise the extent of capital that banks are obliged to put aside towards their property.

Talking at a banking convention in London final month, Orcel stated the financial institution had since he arrived in 2021 labored to maneuver away from mass market purchasers in the direction of “non-public and prosperous”.

In an effort to fend off rising competitors from cheaper, passive investments, wealth managers have been more and more turning to area of interest merchandise with increased charges for purchasers and increasing their providing of illiquid investments exterior public markets. ($1 = 0.9546 euros)