EQT has completed its acquisition of Coller Capital, wrapping up a deal first announced in January and creating a combined secondaries platform that will operate under the name Coller EQT.
The transaction closed Monday, adding one of the largest dedicated secondaries managers — with a 36-year track record spanning LP-led and GP-led strategies — to EQT’s private markets business. Coller EQT will be reported as a new secondaries segment alongside EQT’s existing private capital, infrastructure, and real estate businesses, and the platform has already begun early preparations to expand into additional asset classes, including infrastructure secondaries.
For Coller, the combination provides the balance sheet and distribution of a large-scale institutional manager while, according to both firms, preserving independence over origination, underwriting, and investment decisions. Jeremy Coller, founder of Coller Capital, has been named head and chief investment officer of Coller EQT and joins EQT’s executive committee.
For EQT, the deal is a bet on a secondaries market that has continued to expand even as other parts of private markets tightened up. It adds nine strategies across private equity and credit secondaries to EQT’s offering and extends the firm’s reach with pools of capital it has been courting as it builds out evergreen and semi-liquid products. As of June 30, EQT’s total assets under management stood at €341 billion, or $389 billion, including €186 billion in fee-generating assets under management. The firm’s combined evergreen platform now exceeds €10 billion in net asset value.
“Adding secondaries capabilities to our platform will make us even better placed to be the most attractive counterparty in private markets for clients,” EQT CEO and Managing Partner Per Franzén told analysts as he previewed the deal close on the firm’s second-quarter earnings call in July. “It will also significantly strengthen our positioning in the insurance channel and in private wealth.”
Franzén said on the call that Coller continued to see a growing market for structured products and insurance solutions, pointing to an evergreen structure the firm closed in the first half of the year and a large, traditional 10-year structured funding vehicle it expected to close in the second half.
“Through Coller, we get access to strong insurance relationships, as well as strong structuring capabilities,” he added. “We’re also in early preparations for additional asset classes, drawing benefits from the combined platform, including infrastructure secondaries.”
Franzén also pointed to the second-quarter launch of Coller Credit Opportunities III, saying the fund had been well received by the market. The previous vintage of the firm’s credit secondaries strategy closed in July 2025 at $6.8 billion.
Secondaries volumes accelerate
Coller has remained active in the months since the acquisition was announced. The firm closed a continuation vehicle for Ares Management’s inaugural U.S. direct lending fund, Ares Senior Direct Lending Fund I, with more than $1.3 billion in investor commitments. It also anchored and led a roughly $250 million continuation vehicle for Shurco, a Behrman Capital portfolio company that makes cargo covering and control systems for the transportation industry.
Coller’s activity has come against the backdrop of a secondaries market that has continued to set records. Global secondaries volume topped $120 billion in the first half of 2026, according to Evercore, marking the strongest first half on record and rising nearly 20% from a year earlier. Full-year 2025 volume hit $226 billion, itself a record.
Continuation vehicles have been a particular driver of that growth. Coller’s 44th Global Private Capital Barometer, published in June, found that 40% of investors expected continuation vehicle activity to keep rising even as traditional exit channels recover, while 29% expected it to hold steady, and 31% expected a decline. Research from Schroders Capital published in July forecast that total continuation fund volume would grow from $109 billion in 2025 to more than $330 billion by 2035, with some scenarios pointing to a market as much as five times its current size within that window.
Transaction details
The transaction that closed Monday gives EQT 100% of the Coller Capital management company and the general partner entities that control its funds, along with 10% of carried interest in Coller’s most recent private equity secondaries flagship, Coller International Partners IX, which closed in January at $17 billion in January. Going forward, EQT will be entitled to invest in 35% of the carried interest in all future Coller Capital closed-ended funds, in line with its existing policies.
The base consideration totals $3.2 billion on a cash- and debt-free basis, consisting mainly of 80,360,882 EQT ordinary shares — about 7% of shares outstanding — issued by EQT’s board under authorizations from its 2026 annual shareholders’ meeting. Roughly $65 million of the base consideration was payable in cash at completion, with the final cash portion subject to customary adjustments based on Coller Capital’s completion accounts. The deal also includes contingent consideration of up to $500 million tied to Coller Capital’s business performance through March 2029, to be funded in cash; Coller Capital management members entitled to about 64% of that contingent payout have committed to reinvest the net proceeds in EQT shares.
Franzén said EQT has built its business over more than three decades around the evolving needs of clients, and Coller EQT is a natural next step in that development. EQT said it remains committed to doubling Coller’s fee-generating assets under management within four years.
“Secondaries represent one of the most compelling opportunities in private capital,” Jeremy Coller, founder of the firm bearing his name, said. “My long-term expectation is that, as the market matures, secondaries will become private equity.”
