Pantheon closed its first private equity collateralized fund obligation at $1 billion on May 7, a deal that more than doubled the firm’s initial target of $750 million and drew interest from investors including insurance companies.
The transaction gives investors access to Pantheon’s flagship private equity secondaries strategy, its flagship co-investment strategy and a seeded portfolio of private equity assets, backed by high-quality, predominantly middle-market secondaries investments alongside leading sponsors. The assets are diversified by sector, geography and vintage. Jeffrey Miller, the firm’s executive, said the company has been building and managing private equity secondaries portfolios for nearly four decades, and that the quality of that track record made the deal possible. He said the oversubscription reflected both the strength of the underlying assets and rising sophistication in demand for private markets exposure.
Pantheon began investing in private markets secondaries in 1988 and, as of Sept. 30, 2025, said it had about $85 billion in discretionary assets under management. The firm manages $13.5 billion in private equity secondaries, a scale that helps explain why the new structure landed with investors looking for rated exposure to private markets. The CFO is being presented as an inaugural product and part of Pantheon’s push to develop new structures across private markets.
Florence Dard, another Pantheon executive, said the new structure reflects the firm’s commitment to innovation and to products that meet changing client needs. She said it offers institutional investors, particularly those with specific capital treatment requirements, a highly structured route into the same caliber of portfolio Pantheon builds for its largest clients. Evercore served as structuring adviser and placement agent, while Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP acted as issuer counsel.
The closing underscores how private markets managers are testing new ways to package secondaries for professional investors, especially as demand grows for structures that combine diversification, ratings and exposure to a seasoned private equity platform. For Pantheon, the bigger question now is whether the first CFO becomes a template for more capital-raising of the same kind.
