(Bloomberg) -- Sixth Street, Bridgepoint Group Plc, First Eagle Investment Management and Tikehau Capital SCA are among suitors vying to acquire Kline Hill Partners, a firm focused on secondaries bets, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The asset managers are exploring a deal that could value Greenwich, Connecticut-based Kline Hill at about $500 million, said some of the people, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential information. The structure of the transaction hasn’t been finalized. Kline Hill manages more than $4.2 billion, its website shows.
“Kline Hill’s interest in finding a partner would be to enhance its platform and capabilities as a liquidity provider for private equity assets to under-served portions of the market,” a spokesperson for the firm said.
A spokeswoman for First Eagle said that, “as a policy, we don’t comment on M&A discussions.” Representatives for Sixth Street and Tikehau declined to comment, and Bridgepoint didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Interest in Kline Hill, led by managing partner Michael Bego and partner Jared Barlow, comes amid a period of consolidation in the alternative asset management industry, driven by firms’ desire to expand their offerings to become one-stop shops for large allocators such as pension funds and sovereign-wealth funds.
CVC Capital Partners Plc in July said it bought the remaining stake in secondaries manager Glendower Capital and renamed it CVC Secondary Partners. In 2021, Ares Management Corp. acquired Landmark Partners, a well-known secondaries investor, for $1.08 billion, and Franklin Templeton completed its purchase of Lexington Partners, one of the largest secondaries investors, for $1.75 billion in 2022.
London-based Bridgepoint has about €67 billion ($73 billion) in assets under management, its website shows. The firm has been acquisitive, and in August completed the purchase of infrastructure investor Energy Capital Partners. Its shares have gained 71% in the past 12 months.
Sixth Street has about $80 billion in assets under management, and recently added a former banker from JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the newly created role of chief financial officer.
First Eagle, which had about $138 billion in assets under management as of June 30, has also been acquisitive. The firm in 2022 bought Napier Park Global Capital, which at the time had about $19.5 billion under management across credit funds, collateralized loan obligations and real assets.
Paris-based Tikehau, which had €46.1 billion ($50.4 billion) in assets under management as of June 30, in 2020 bought Star America, a developer of infrastructure assets, which is now known as Tikehau Star Infra, or TSI. It bought real estate asset manager Sofidy in 2018.
--With assistance from Swetha Gopinath.
(Adds Tikehau in first, fourth and 10th paragraphs.)
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