The international investment house has held the first closing of a fund that targets the secondary market for private equity investments.

Geneva-headquartered asset management house Unigestion has held the first close of a fund focused on the secondary market in private equity investment, called Unigestion Secondaries Opportunities IV, taking commitments worth more than €177 million ($197.4 million). 

Unigestion is seeking total commitments of €300 million, it said.

The fund continues a strategy that the firm has had in place since 2000. The latest fund seeks deals that are on the smaller end of the spectrum, where it sees attractive valuations. Unigestion said its fund has a net return target of 1.6 times cost/20 per cent internal rate of return. (The secondary market refers to the buying and selling of pre-existing investor commitments to private equity and other alternative investment funds.)

“We expect deal-flow to remain robust for the foreseeable future, especially as the large number of funds which were raised from 2006 to 2008 are now approaching the end of their lives and require liquidity solutions for the existing limited partners,” said Christophe de Dardel, head of private equity at the firm.