Bastian Wolff was head of Asia real estate at Partners before co-founding Aquilius (Image: Aquilius)
A Singapore fund manager specialising in buying stakes in private Asia Pacific real estate funds has closed on $750 million in commitments for its second major investment vehicle as investment managers continue to face challenges selling down assets to return cash to investors.
Aquilius Investment Partners, which was founded by former Partners Group and Blackstone executives in 2021, surpassed their initial target of $700 million for AIP Secondary Fund II, according to a statement, and including associated vehicles, raised a total of $1.1 billion. The firm said that the strategy had received commitments from sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and other financial institutions as well as family offices.
“We are actively capitalising on a generational buying opportunity for secondaries in Asia,” Bastian Wolff, founding partner at Aquilius said in a statement. “This milestone fundraise is a testament to our strong track record and highlights the continued and growing appetite for Asian real estate secondaries investments among LPs, as market volatility and the need for liquidity drives deal volume to record highs.”
Secondary transactions of private fund holdings allow investors to exit their stakes in unlisted vehicles – including selling at a discount during depressed markets. The strategies have risen in popularity as asset owners grapple with lower commercial real estate values which may force investment managers to sell assets at depressed rates in order to realise returns as funds reach their expiration dates.
Thawing Frozen Markets
While some real estate markets in Asia Pacific have begun to recover from a deep freeze which followed the US federal reserve commencing a series of interest rates hikes in 2022, total investment in income earning properties in Asia Pacific totalled $69.8 billion in the first half of 2025, according to MSCI, down from $90.3 billion in the same period three years ago.
Christian Kleiber served nine years with Blackstone (Image: Aquilius)
With the downturn depressing commercial property values in Hong Kong by one third or more, fund managers which have been unable to realise investments have found it difficult to raise fresh cash.
Aquilius says it seeks to capitalise on Asia Pacific’s fast-growing, untapped market for real estate secondaries, with the aim of building highly diversified, shorter duration portfolios focused on ‘new economy’ sectors which can offer investors attractive, risk-adjusted returns.
The firm says it has already deployed approximately 50 percent of the total commitments to AIP SF II across eight secondary market transactions.
“The past 12 months marked a record-breaking year for secondaries volume,” said Aquilius founding partner Christian Keiber. “We are committed to being the leading provider of secondaries solutions in the Asia Pacific region – partnering with institutional investors and fund managers to deliver value through creative, efficient and scalable liquidity solutions while delivering compelling returns to our investors.”
Prior to setting up Aquilius four years ago, Kleiber spent nine years with Blackstone, where he had served most recently as a managing director with the company’s private equity team in Singapore. Wolff served fifteen years with Partners Group, where he worked as the Swiss firm’s head of real estate for Asia.
Secondaries on the Rise
Aquilius’ fundraising is line with a surge of recent secondaries deals in Asia Pacific, with The Hong Kong Jockey Club having recently sold $1 billion worth of assets from its fund portfolio at a discount to Toronto-based Dawson Partners, according to a report by Bloomberg on 27 October, citing people familiar with the matter.
The sale includes stakes in funds managed by Blackstone and other private equity firms, with the shares having changed hands at a single-digit discount to their original values, per the story.
Singapore’s GIC was also said last week to be looking to exit at least $1 billion in private equity fund stakes through secondary transactions.
With trades of private fund stakes on the rise, Macquarie Asset Management said in July that it had raised $711 million for its first secondaries fund targetting the infrastructure sector.
In September, Blackstone said that it had raised $5.5 billion for SP Infrastructure IV, creating what it said is the largest dedicated infrastructure secondaries fund raised ever.
