Managing Partner’s Update 2025

The fundraising environment remained challenging across all asset classes in 2024. However, as interest rates began to decline, we saw a rebound in M&A and secondary market activity, marking the start of the slow process of repatriating capital to investors. While we anticipate the first half of this year will remain challenging, we are beginning to see some funds successfully raising capital, and momentum is building, with new high quality fund management businesses entering the market. The extended recovery period has had a negative impact on mid-market asset managers in all asset classes, as higher-than-expected interest rates – alongside declining returns due to difficulties in exiting assets – has led to a struggle for some to raise further capital.

Against this backdrop, the growing sense that inflation may persist in the medium term has led to an interest in high-quality, income-generating real assets. On the private equity side, businesses that started during the pandemic, particularly in areas such as technology and healthcare, are now emerging as attractive targets for lower mid-market managers spinning out from the old mid-market platforms. While investors remain committed to the major, multi-disciplined managers, there is also significant interest in supporting smaller managers, especially to avoid missing out on the latest market trends. This is especially evident in the US, but also in the UK, where the greatest percentage of Europe’s tech start-ups are based in order to access capital. US general partners (GPs) are responding to this by increasing their presence in London to compete in Europe for the best deals for their US funds. This augments their fundraising efforts in the EU as they continue the diversification of their LP bases through pre-marketing under AIFMD.

A key initiative at Langham Hall continues to be our Wolfram computable data strategy. All our jurisdictions are now focusing on transitioning remaining clients to this platform, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Comments such as, “Four years of dashboard presentations from the market and this was the best presentation and most tailored tool for what we need” reflect the success of this initiative. To recap, our strategy represents a significant leap ahead of traditional GL-based systems by enabling the interrogation of a flexible yet hierarchical data repository containing both financial and non-financial data. This enhances the speed and flexibility of all management and performance reporting and streamlines the handling of side letters and miscellaneous investor reporting, all within a single strategy.

Despite the challenges, Langham Hall achieved double digit growth in the past year. We focused heavily on strengthening the foundations of our professional services. A significant amount of time was spent by our senior team ensuring alignment in our approach to client work and in accelerating the development of talent within our client teams. As an independent business, our clients and teams remain our top priorities.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all our clients, colleagues and advisors for your continued loyalty and support.

Best wishes,

Rob Short
Managing Partner