Private Markets
Since the growth of non-bank lending in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, there is barely a global asset manager that does not espouse the virtues of Private Markets.
Where AllianzGI Private Markets differs, stems from our origins. Our expertise in Private Markets has been designed and developed to meet the investment and social demands of our parent company, Allianz. With their active encouragement, we have pioneered investments into areas such as renewables, infrastructure debt, development finance and trade finance, each offering potential portfolio diversification and competitive risk-adjusted returns.
Our offering now extends to a broad range of sophisticated investors with innovative solutions across the fields of infrastructure – debt, equity and secondaries – as well as private credit – be that direct lending, indirect or trade finance. And drawing on Allianz Group’s focus on sustainability, this expertise includes specialisms in renewables, development finance and the area of impact investing.
With our experience and strength in Infrastructure and Private Credit, we believe we offer clients a unique combination of market access and sourcing capabilities together with a true solutions mindset.
Allianz Global Investors (“AllianzGI”), a leading active asset manager with over EUR 90bn* of assets under management in private markets, serves both Allianz and further institutional investors. By entrusting us with investments, clients can benefit from our expertise in extending and diversifying investment portfolios, enabling to achieve investment goals also during market dislocations.
*data as at 30 June 2025
Figures at a glance
5 reasons to partner with AllianzGI
Our insights
Our private market capabilities
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is an asset class for institutional investors that aims to provide long-term stable returns and cash flows. Investing on behalf of one of the leading infrastructure investors globally 1 and further institutional investors, we have made over 250 investments across 6 continents, supporting sectors that drive the energy transition, digitization and urbanization.
Infrastructure debt is an asset class for institutional investors that aims to provide long-term stable returns and cash flows. As one of the leading infrastructure investors globally 1, we source high credit quality Infrastructure Debt transactions by identifying, differentiating and managing risk.
Our Infrastructure Debt Projects
Solar farms in Chile, data centres in the US, hybrid ferries in Norway, or battery-powered trains in Germany – they are all investments we made. Our Infrastructure Debt team is an experienced and well-resourced team with a successful operational platform and investment process. Since the platform was established in 2012, the team has closed over 150 transactions in over 20 countries across Europe and the US, spanning a variety of asset classes, from public-private partnerships (“PPP”) to utilities and renewables.
The team
Our Infrastructure Debt platform has been active in the primary market on behalf of Allianz and our additional professional clients since 2012. The team differentiates itself through the sourcing and origination of private placements, innovative financial engineering and the enhanced credibility.
The capabilities
We strive to source high quality assets with attractive illiquidity and complexity spreads and offer access to a diversity of sectors that would otherwise be closed to public investors. As one of the first movers we can rely on partnerships to relevant sponsors and banks and other stakeholders.
Given our long-term investment horizon, we focus on investments that provide stable, preferably inflation-linked cash flows over the long term. With attractive return potential, steady regular income and a very low correlation with the capital market as a whole, infrastructure equity offers an interesting opportunity to improve the portfolio structure2.
Our Infrastructure equity projects
A stable power grid for Finland, an attractive fibre rollout to the home network in Germany and a modern underground network in Spain – these are three examples of our 25 long-term infrastructure equity investments. Our infra fund and co-investment team has made over 60 investments across 6 continents. By investing in funds, we can further contribute to the diversification across fund managers, vintage years, sectors, and geographies and accelerate the deployment of capital.
Furthermore, our renewables team invested in over 150 wind and solar farms worldwide.
The team
Our infrastructure direct equity team was established in 2007 which was expanded to indirect investments in 2016. Since 2005 our renewable energy team has been investing in wind and solar farms.
The capabilities
We invest in assets that provide essential services to the public and are supported by regulated or contracted revenues, or a strong market position with a focus on energy transition, sustainable investments and digitization. We pursue opportunities globally, focusing on countries with a well-established fiscal and regulatory track record.
Private Credit
Private Credit offers institutional investors investment opportunities with competitive risk-adjusted returns and strong downside risk mitigation. We have been financing the debt of low to mid-market private corporates since 2013. We believe that diversification across asset managers, geographies, sectors, styles and vintage years is essential to utilize the full potential of private debt & equity for our long-term investors.
Global Private Credit
Our Global Private Debt programme invests in a suite of strategies that provides access to broadly diversified global private debt portfolios with strong downside risk mitigation The capabilities invest in private debt primaries, secondaries and co-investments worldwide that finance mid-sized companies’ needs in various situations such as expansion or, growth. Throughout the portfolio diversification will be sought across sectors, geographies and underlying investments.
Pioneered by Allianz, in 2021 the programme was opened to additional institutional investors. The team invests broadly across the private credit universe in senior lending, subordinated and special situations capabilities.
European Private Credit
The team provides senior long-term financing to mid-market companies, either to support their growth or to refinance, with a focus on performing companies benefiting from a good track-record of profitability.
The European Private Credit team invests through a wide range of opportunities, either directly originated or intermediated. It aims at providing diversification away from the public markets and a balanced risk/return profile through credit selection and the robust documentation of investments.
Asia Private Credit
AllianzGI launched the platform in 2018, recognizing the opportunity for institutional investors to invest in the region, driven by a significant funding gap for mid-market corporates in Asia seeking bespoke credit solutions for the purposes of growth acquisitions or refinancing.
To best capture this opportunity, we seek to act as a “one-stop” shop for structured credit solutions and provide customized holistic non-dilutive credit alternatives to cash generative, high growth, performing mid-cap companies via senior secured, subordinated or mezzanine lending. Our team provides debt financing to middle market corporates in Asia Pacific (excluding China) in order to capture competitive yield pick-up compared to comparable public debt (e.g. high yield, broadly syndicated loans) with strong downside risk mitigation providing diversification within the credit asset class.
Trade Finance
Trade finance helps suppliers to receive payment earlier by providing ultra-short-term financing for their invoices. Such investments benefit from returns that are uncorrelated to other private or public market investments. Our trade finance solutions provide investors with liquidity and a high Sharpe ratio. Trade finance has multiple places in investment portfolios and as a result, we have a diverse mix of pension funds, family offices, treasury and insurance investors across Europe, the UK and Asia.
While trade finance is effectively short-term credit investing, it brings with it a higher operational complexity than public credit and therefore requires the right operational framework, a robust infrastructure and a thorough due diligence process. With these in place, investors can capture a compelling complexity premium.
AllianzGI launched its trade finance platform in 2019. The success is due to our unique approach to trade finance where we have designed our strategy to allow very broad diversification by sourcing partner, industry, company, and geography as well as a robust credit process. Unlike some other trade finance capabilities our approach’s value chain covers every step of the investment and operational process. This has allowed us to avoid the default and fraud cases that have hit the headlines in recent quarters and deliver our strong track record.
Impact investments are investments that, in addition to seeking a financial return, are also expected to have a positive impact on the environment or society. It is important that the targeted ecological and/or social effects are explicitly part of the investment approach.
The team
At AllianzGI, we strive to provide our clients access to investments generating positive environmental and social outcomes. For a long time ‘investing in a good cause’ was not regarded as an investment activity in the strict financial sense but was assigned to the area of charity.
The capabilities
What was a niche about 10 years ago is turning into one of the fastest growing investment segments: ranging from Blended Finance through Private Credit to Private Equity. Within Emerging Markets, we focused on blended finance strategies with development banks. For our impact capabilities we utilize the AllianzGI impact framework which requires a minimum impact score per investment. Our impact approach focuses on companies who through their operation seek to provide solution to planet and society’s major challenges.
Blended Finance
Blended finance is a technique used to enable commercial investors to access emerging markets debt opportunities in a scalable and de-risked way, thereby supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Blended finance provides access to this new asset class of impactful investments and focus on investing in sectors and geographies that are under-represented in public markets. We believe such capabilities can provide investors with de-risked, uncorrelated returns in emerging markets.
At AllianzGI, the Development Finance team enables leading institutional investors to co-invest in a portfolio of loan participations that support the sustainable development goals in Emerging Markets.
Impact Credit
Our strategy launched by AllianzGI in 2024. Through direct lending instruments, we aim to accompany the development of impact champions that are providing solutions to societal challenges with a focus on three core themes: climate change, planetary boundaries and inclusive capitalism.
We believe that private equity is a growing and attractive asset class for institutional investors that seek to create long-term value. With its active management approach, as well as ample opportunities for diversification, we are convinced that this asset class holds its long-term appeal, even in times of market turbulence.
The team
We have been active in the area of private equity investments since 1996. We have built a balanced global portfolio, based on diversification across geographies, sectors, managers and vintage years.
The capabilities
By investing in private equity funds, we spread our investments across a pool of privately owned companies. It offers us the opportunity to invest across a range of company sizes, benefiting from the different investment styles. Our global coverage gives us access to different geographic markets and economic cycles.
Our Private Equity Projects
The Allianz Private Equity team invests in private equity funds worldwide, and covers the entire spectrum, from buy-outs to growth equity in both primary and secondary markets. In addition, it is also active in the area of co-investments, whereby it invests alongside our private equity managers.
In order to deal with the consequences of climate change, we require investment in a completely different order of magnitude. The world can only overcome this challenge if private capital is mobilized alongside limited public funds. Only the former is available in abundance, for example to finance the transition to renewable energies in Africa - and to do this now so that the continent does not continue to rely on fossil fuels. However, because the risks are high and many markets are untested, private investors cannot easily invest their clients’ money into such projects. Public capital is therefore added as a buffer in order to reduce the default risk for private investors to a normal level. As soon as the risk-return profile is right, private investors are very open to investments of this kind.
Our capabilities in more detail
1 Source: Top 100 Infrastructure Investors 2024: Full ranking | Special Reports | Real Assets
2 The performance of the strategy is not guaranteed and losses remain possible
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Private markets investments are highly illiquid and designed for professional investors pursuing a long-term investment strategy only.
Investing involves risk. The value of an investment and the income from it may fall as well as rise and investors might not get back the full amount invested. Investing in fixed income instruments may expose investors to various risks, including but not limited to creditworthiness, interest rate, liquidity and restricted flexibility risks. Changes to the economic environment and market conditions may affect these risks, resulting in an adverse effect to the value of the investment. During periods of rising nominal interest rates, the values of fixed income instruments (including positions with respect to short-term fixed income instruments) are generally expected to decline. Conversely, during periods of declining interest rates, the values of these instruments are generally expected to rise. Liquidity risk may possibly delay or prevent account withdrawals or redemptions. Past performance does not predict future returns. If the currency in which the past performance is displayed differs from the currency of the country in which the investor resides, then the investor should be aware that due to the exchange rate fluctuations the performance shown may be higher or lower if converted into the investor’s local currency. The views and opinions expressed herein, which are subject to change without notice, are those of the issuer companies at the time of publication. The data used is derived from various sources, and assumed to be correct and reliable at the time of publication. The conditions of any underlying offer or contract that may have been, or will be, made or concluded, shall prevail. This is a marketing communication issued by Allianz Global Investors (Schweiz) AG, a 100% subsidiary of Allianz Global Investors GmbH. The Summary of Investor Rights is available in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish at https://regulatory.allianzgi.com/en/investors-rights. The duplication, publication, or transmission of the contents, irrespective of the form, is not permitted; except for the case of explicit permission by Allianz Global Investors GmbH.
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