M&G launches a private credit LTAF and Coutts adds evergreen private markets funds for advisory clients. Are these funds showing the strain of offering periodic liquidity?

Coutts is making evergreen private markets funds from Ares, Apollo and HarbourVest available to clients on an advisory basis. They sit alongside KKR's $8.3bn private equity vehicle K-Prime and its $7.3bn infrastructure strategy KIF, "for sophisticated clients who want private market exposure" (Citywire Wealth Manager, 23 and 25 September). On 12 October M&G launched The M&G Diversified Private Credit Feeder LTAF with £74m of seed capital, targeting SONIA plus 5% a year over five years in an evergreen format.

KKR's Markus Egloff said "We recently became the largest manager of evergreen private markets funds in Europe" (Bloomberg, 17 September). KKR had €13.6bn across European-domiciled evergreen platforms at the end of the first quarter, against €13.4bn for Partners Group. Partners Group, however, capped withdrawals from its flagship Global Value SICAV at 5% of NAV a quarter in June, when second-quarter redemption requests were estimated at 9.8% (Bloomberg). Third-quarter requests were "back at the 5% level" (Bloomberg, 7 October). On 2 October Partners Group proposed splitting the €6.6bn fund into a distributing portfolio, which will hold the older assets and sell them to meet redemptions, and a compounding portfolio, which will make new investments and take all new money.

In the US, non-traded vehicles typically cap quarterly repurchases at 5%, and several received far more requests in the third quarter. BCRED received about $4.3bn of requests, roughly 10% of its shares, and pro-rated at its 5% cap. Investors in Ares Strategic Income Fund tendered 13.1% of shares, and the fund will meet 38.2% of requests. Requests reached 16.8% of shares at Blue Owl's OCIC and 39% at OTIC, and both will repurchase 5%.

Will European evergreen funds see the same? The European market is far smaller and younger. US evergreen funds totalled $607bn across 567 funds at 31 March 2026 (Morningstar PitchBook). Evergreen ELTIFs held around €10bn at the end of 2025 (Morningstar), within a total ELTIF market of €34bn that grew 54.7% in 2025 (Scope). Of the 268 ELTIFs authorised, 113 launched in 2025 and 61 in 2024 (Scope), so most have not yet been through a redemption cycle. Luxembourg is the main domicile: 161 of the 286 ELTIFs available in Europe are registered there (LPEA/ALFI, ESMA data at 31 March 2026).

The first European test cases have arrived. The Greenman OPEN ELTIF suspended redemptions in December 2025, freezing €140m, almost a fifth of its €730m NAV (Irish Times). Scope called it "the first gating of an ELTIF". European structures do build in longer exits: evergreen ELTIFs sold in Germany have average notice periods of 77 days for private debt and 116 to 258 days for other strategies (ELTIF.info). Morningstar says liquidity in evergreen ELTIFs "is conditional rather than guaranteed". The ECB warned in May that liquidity mismatch "could grow as new partly retail-oriented semi-open private credit vehicles" expand. The Bank of England's Financial Policy Committee noted on 30 September that "Redemptions at foreign private credit funds with a retail and wealth investor base remained elevated."