Goldman Sachs’s Petershill plans to list in London

The London-based business, which invests in private equity and hedge fund firms that collectively manage $187 billion in assets, is tapping into global investors’ desire for juicy returns amid consistently low interest rates. The deal, which will see Petershill as a stand-alone company overseen by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, could be valued at more than $5 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

Founded in 2007, Petershill plans to raise $750 million by selling new shares and will sell existing shares separately. Some of the firms Petershill has invested in include Francisco Partners, Caxton Associates LP and Pelham Capital Ltd. After the offer of new and existing shares, at least one quarter of the company’s shares will be listed.

The listing comes during an encouraging time for private equity. The industry has attracted hundreds of billions of dollars from investors during the pandemic. Share prices of large private-equity firms such as Blackstone Group Inc and KKR & Co have skyrocketed.

A public listing would provide Petershill a new source of capital to help fund additional investments. Petershill has targeted firms that manage technology investments since 2017 and has most recently focused on health care and environmental, social and governance matters.

Petershill’s plan comes amid a flurry of private-equity initial public offerings. Antin Infrastructure Partners SA, which oversees €19.9 billion in assets, equivalent to about $24 billion, said on Friday it plans to raise €350 million from an IPO and list on the Euronext Paris stock exchange.

Bridgepoint Group plc, an internationally focused buyout firm, went public in July. Its share price has increased by about 45% since the start of trading.

The Petershill listing is part of Goldman’s efforts to capitalize on its asset-management businesses. The firm last month agreed to acquire the wealth-management operations of Dutch insurer NN Group NV for about $1.87 billion to gain access to a larger pool of retail and institutional investors in Europe.

Goldman’s chief executive David Solomon since taking over the top post in 2018 has moved the bank away from volatile and capital-intensive sectors such as trading derivatives and towards stable businesses such as wealth and asset management.