The Gates Held. What an LP Should Underwrite Now.
In July we wrote that the evergreen structure moves the LP's hard questions rather than removing them, and that under stress the redemption gates bind precisely when liquidity is most needed (The Evergreen Turn in Private Markets). The second quarter of 2026 supplied the test.
On June 4, 2026, Partners Group disclosed that Partners Group Global Value SICAV, a roughly USD 8.6 billion evergreen private-equity vehicle offered through the private wealth channel, had received redemption requests of approximately 9.8% of net asset value for the quarter, against a quarterly liquidity limit of 5%. The firm applied the limit. A second, Delaware-domiciled evergreen vehicle saw requests of approximately 6% of NAV against the same 5% threshold. Three other mature evergreen funds, USD 9.7 billion in aggregate and held mainly by institutional investors, were estimated at 3.5% to 5%. The firm stated it was prepared to enact the same mechanism across other funds, and guided that the evergreen platform could slow its overall net asset growth by 1 to 2 percentage points in the second half of 2026, with a similar effect in 2027. The firm's shares fell as much as 18% in Zurich trading on June 3, the day the news broke, and listed peers EQT and CVC Capital Partners fell more than 5%.
None of this was a structural failure. The limits were disclosed in advance, they were applied as written, and holders who asked to redeem received a pro-rata share of the quarter's capacity and a place in the queue for the next. That is the mechanism working as designed. It is also the point: an LP who holds a semi-liquid vehicle holds a liquidity schedule, and the schedule, not the headline redemption right, is what should have been underwritten.
The scale of what is now semi-liquid
The evergreen universe is no longer a niche. Morningstar PitchBook counted USD 607 billion across 567 evergreen funds as of March 31, 2026, up from USD 590.8 billion and 552 funds in 2025. Direct lending is the largest strategy at USD 236.5 billion, ahead of real estate, private equity, and alternative credit. Business development companies, interval funds, and tender-offer funds account for most of the structures. A meaningful share of institutional private-markets exposure now sits in vehicles whose liquidity is a policy rather than a wind-down.
Three things to underwrite, with the arithmetic
1. The redemption term is a schedule. Model it as one.
A 5% quarterly limit means that if every holder wanted out at once, a full exit would take twenty quarters. No one models the extreme case, but the moderate case is instructive. With requests running at roughly twice the limit, as in the June episode, a redeeming holder receives about half of the request in the first quarter and re-queues for the balance. If demand persists at that level, the time to exit a position is measured in years, not quarters. An LP should know, for each semi-liquid holding, how many quarters a full exit takes under a base case and under a stress case, and should hold that number next to the closed-end program's drawdown schedule. The two are the same kind of object: a timed claim on cash, with the timing partly outside the LP's control (the commitment you can't choose).
2. NAV is the transaction price in a queue.
In a closed-end fund the appraisal-based NAV is an interim figure; realization settles the account. In a semi-liquid vehicle NAV is the price at which capital enters and leaves, and in a queue it is the price at which the remaining holders are diluted or enriched by every redemption. A mark that lags public prices transfers value between those who leave this quarter and those who stay. The reliability of the mark, and the direction of the lag, is therefore a first-order question, and it is exactly the question private-market data cannot settle with precision (Beliefs, Not Forecasts). The defensible posture is to hold a range of views about the mark's bias and to test the redemption decision across that range, rather than to treat the printed NAV as a price.
3. Your co-investors are your liquidity risk.
The June figures carry a second signal. The two funds with the highest requests were the ones offered through the private wealth channel; the three held mainly by institutional investors ran at or below the limit. A holder's effective liquidity depends on who else is in the vehicle and how they behave under stress, which is a diligence question about the investor base, not about the portfolio. Correlated demand from a distribution channel can bind a gate that the portfolio's own cash generation could otherwise have met.
The cost that hides in the sleeve
There is a fourth item that is easy to miss because it appears in a different line. To meet redemptions a semi-liquid vehicle holds a liquidity sleeve, and that sleeve is idle capital earning a fraction of the return the allocation was sized for. Our loan-level study of a long-horizon private-credit program found that the return given up to idle capital grows as the horizon lengthens (The Longer the Program, the More Idle Capital Costs). An evergreen vehicle is, by construction, a long-horizon program. The sleeve that makes the redemption policy credible is the same drag, carried permanently. An LP comparing an evergreen vehicle to a closed-end program should net that cost explicitly rather than assume the two structures carry it equally.
The decision this poses
The June episode does not argue against semi-liquid vehicles. It argues for underwriting them as what they are. A closed-end fund asks the LP to accept a drawdown schedule it does not control; a semi-liquid vehicle asks the LP to accept a redemption schedule it does not control. Both belong in the same liquidity model, on the same assumptions, under the same stress cases. The vehicle that looks more liquid on the term sheet may or may not be more liquid in the quarter the LP needs the cash. The model should say which.
The Design Partner Program is a selective deployment for institutions battle-testing the platform. If a semi-liquid holding sits alongside a closed-end program in your book, walking the two liquidity pictures side by side, under a redemption stress case, is a conversation we're glad to have.
Sources: Partners Group press release, June 4, 2026; Bloomberg, June 3, 2026; Morningstar PitchBook U.S. evergreen fund data as of March 31, 2026. The arithmetic is illustrative and is not a forecast for any specific vehicle.