EQT stands among the largest and most influential private equity investment institutions on the planet, commanding immense financial resources and managing a vast portfolio of holdings across continents. Yet, despite this impressive scale and impact, the name EQT remains unfamiliar to most affluent Americans. This lack of widespread recognition within one of the world’s most sophisticated investor populations represents both a challenge and an opportunity for Peter Aliprantis, the Swedish firm’s Head of Private Wealth in the Americas. As he seeks to introduce EQT to a marketplace long dominated by Wall Street titans and household‑name investment managers with constant exposure on CNBC and other financial networks, Aliprantis faces the formidable task of building awareness while emphasizing the company’s distinctive heritage and strategy.
Aliprantis has described EQT as something of a “best‑kept secret” in the United States—an organization widely admired in Europe and Asia but relatively invisible to many American investors. Founded in Sweden and deeply rooted in the traditions of Scandinavian industrial stewardship, EQT has achieved a scale that few rivals can match. According to Private Equity International, the firm ranks as the second‑largest private equity manager globally, supervising approximately $312 billion in assets. From 2020 through the end of 2024, it successfully raised more than $113 billion in third‑party capital for private equity endeavors—outpacing even Blackstone’s comparable totals and trailing only KKR for the decade thus far. Now, like many of its global peers, EQT is redirecting its growth ambitions toward private wealth—seeking to attract individual investors and family offices as a supplementary source of long‑term capital at a moment when large institutional funding is showing signs of deceleration.
The shift in strategic emphasis across the private equity sector reflects broader structural changes. Institutional investors such as pension funds and sovereign wealth vehicles have become over‑allocated to private markets, limiting their capacity for additional commitments. At the same time, firms have been slower to return cash to those investors as exit opportunities diminish, creating a bottleneck that restricts liquidity. In that context, tapping private wealth provides not only a new fundraising avenue but also a more diversified and stable investor base. Interestingly, Aliprantis argues that EQT’s relative anonymity in America—a drawback in terms of brand recognition—may simultaneously be one of its competitive advantages. As debt‑laden buyouts grow trickier and the U.S. private market becomes increasingly concentrated and saturated, EQT’s methodically global, asset‑building orientation contrasts sharply with the transactional, leverage‑driven approach traditional on Wall Street.
The firm’s financial performance illustrates this disciplined philosophy. During the year ending June 2025, EQT distributed roughly $23 billion to investors, maintaining a steady pattern of capital returns even as the broader market showed signs of stagnation. Over the past four years, it has also been constructing a sophisticated private‑wealth business that now represents about 10 percent of its total assets under management. Ambitiously, the firm aims to raise that proportion to between 15 and 20 percent over the course of its current $100 billion fundraising cycle, as disclosed in its second‑quarter report. Aliprantis explains that much of his role consists of articulating EQT’s pitch to financial advisors and private‑wealth distribution networks—demonstrating to them why its worldwide footprint and local expertise offer a meaningful edge in the investment environment of 2025.
At the heart of that pitch lies a simple but powerful principle: EQT provides individual investors access to exactly the same deals it offers its institutional clients. Unlike some competitors that create separate, often less lucrative pools of assets for retail investors, EQT insists on uniformity between investor classes. This parity underscores the firm’s long‑standing identity as an “industrialist” investor—a manager dedicated to building businesses with tangible value rather than relying on financial engineering or excessive leverage. EQT’s origins trace back to 1994, when it was spun off from the renowned industrial holding company Investor AB, itself a cornerstone of Sweden’s economic landscape. Its lineage, however, reaches much further, rooted in the legacy of the Wallenberg family, often characterized as the “Rockefellers of Europe.” Over more than a century and a half, the Wallenbergs have been instrumental in nurturing many of Sweden’s corporate champions, including ABB, AstraZeneca, and Saab. Their tradition of disciplined, long‑range ownership remains deeply embedded in EQT’s culture and differentiates it sharply from the financial‑engineering‑heavy ethos that typifies much of Wall Street.
Aliprantis notes that the broader private equity industry faces an inflection point: the era of easy, debt‑fueled returns is fading, and generating performance increasingly depends on improving underlying businesses. In this environment, EQT’s global structure becomes not merely advantageous but essential. Only around 35 percent of the firm’s assets reside in North America, with the remainder spread across Europe, Asia, and other markets. Its 26 offices worldwide house investment teams that live and work in the very regions where they deploy capital—participating in local private equity, infrastructure, and real‑estate transactions. This decentralized model stands in contrast to the more centralized approaches of many American firms, which often fly teams from New York or other financial hubs into foreign markets to execute deals before quickly returning home.
Because EQT’s professionals are embedded within their respective markets, the firm is often the first to receive a call when local business owners contemplate selling or seeking strategic partners. This early access allows EQT to negotiate and evaluate opportunities before they become competitive bidding situations, avoiding the “bake‑off” processes that can inflate prices and compress returns. Moreover, its geographic diversification enables the firm to maintain consistent distributions even when regional markets slow. As Aliprantis observes, private‑market firms concentrated predominantly in the United States risk liquidity challenges when domestic IPO or M&A activity decelerates; EQT, by comparison, can draw exits from stronger regions to balance weaker ones.
The structural imbalance between capital supply and deal availability further underscores this point. In the United States, vast sums chase a relatively limited inventory of private‑market opportunities—a dynamic that drives valuations higher and squeezes profitability. Europe and Asia, by contrast, still offer a broader array of businesses seeking partnership capital, often at more favorable pricing. Bain & Company estimates that European private‑market funds collectively hold about $480 billion in uninvested “dry powder,” whereas U.S.‑focused firms possess nearly double that amount, approximately $914.5 billion, excluding venture capital. Industry voices such as Apollo’s Marc Rowan have even remarked that private equity is now constrained less by capital shortages than by a scarcity of compelling ideas.
This imbalance feeds another concern that Aliprantis hears from investors: the increasing concentration of the U.S. public market in a small cluster of technology giants. The so‑called “Magnificent Seven” stocks now represent roughly 37 percent of the S&P 500’s total capitalization, creating a narrow and potentially precarious exposure. Many investors, he notes, wonder whether artificial intelligence—so central to these companies’ valuation narratives—will ultimately produce the transformative profits that current expectations imply. Such questions drive some investors to diversify internationally, seeking growth that is less dependent on this concentrated segment of the market.
For EQT, addressing the unique needs of retail and high‑net‑worth investors requires not only credible performance but also structural integrity. Across the industry, a frequent worry is that individual investors may end up with products that mirror the institutionally branded funds in name only, investing instead in a different—and possibly less attractive—set of deals. Aliprantis stresses that EQT’s six evergreen funds invest directly alongside its institutional vehicles in the identical transactions, preserving alignment of interests across its investor base. Achieving this consistency depends on the firm’s scale and balance‑sheet strength. Building a dedicated private‑wealth platform demands significant upfront investment—often millions of dollars—to recruit talent, develop distribution relationships, and navigate regulatory complexities long before the business generates meaningful revenue.
EQT’s position as a publicly traded firm in Sweden has enabled it to dedicate its own corporate capital to this effort. Today it employs approximately seventy professionals focused exclusively on private wealth worldwide, including twenty based in the United States, reflecting both commitment and confidence in the opportunity ahead. Although Aliprantis acknowledges that smaller managers may find success in certain niches, he argues that the economics of retail distribution favor large, well‑resourced players. As competition intensifies and a multitude of asset managers seek access to individual capital, consolidation within the sector appears inevitable. “The race is on,” he remarks—a succinct encapsulation of the momentum now sweeping through global private markets.
Thus, EQT’s current mission transcends simple brand expansion. It represents an evolution in how private equity firms conceptualize their investor bases: moving from institutional corridors to the broader sphere of private wealth, while staying true to the disciplined industrial heritage that has guided the Swedish group since its inception. In an environment defined by both global opportunity and saturated domestic markets, EQT’s emphasis on local expertise, worldwide reach, and genuine alignment with investors may well prove to be the strategic combination that elevates this Scandinavian powerhouse into every discerning investor’s vocabulary.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/eqt-private-equity-private-wealth-shares-its-plan-2025-12
