Golding Capital Partners looks back on a positive 2023 and sets its course for the future: Richard Wilmes, Head of Secondaries, appointed Partner // Increasing importance of transaction-oriented investments
Munich, Golding Capital Partners, one of Europe's leading independent alternative investment asset managers, looks back on a positive 2023 and sets its course for the future. The promotion of Richard Wilmes, who is currently responsible for the secondaries business, reflects the increasing importance of transaction-oriented investments.
Golding raised €1.7 billion in new capital from investors in 2023. The fifth edition of the infrastructure fund of funds series with a target volume of €700 million reached its first closing with capital commitments of €360 million. And the current secondaries fund has already almost reached the total size of its predecessor of around €280 million and is expected to grow further to 500 million euros as planned.
Investments were made in parallel for a similar amount. With an investment volume of around €1.7 billion in 2023, capital commitments remained at roughly the same level as the previous year (€1.8 billion), despite the changes in the market environment. The number of completed investments rose by 13 compared with 2022 to a total of 68, of which 28 were co-investments and 10 were secondaries.
The increasing relevance of secondaries is reflected in their higher share of Golding’s total investment volume. Whereas five percent of all investments were made in the secondaries sector in 2022, this went up to 13 percent in 2023. This is due to favourable developments in the secondary markets, which look set to continue in 2024.
Golding expands its circle of partners with Richard Wilmes
The promotion to partner of Richard Wilmes, who is already responsible for the secondaries division, underlines the increasing importance of transaction-oriented investments.
"With over a decade of pioneering work in building up the secondaries sector and his deep understanding of the market, Richard Wilmes is an outstanding expert. With his promotion we have established the secondaries business at partner level and underlined the relevance of transaction-oriented investments. Secondaries and co-investments already represent about 50 percent of our investments," says Jeremy Golding, Founder and Managing Partner at Golding.
"I have been accompanying Golding’s successful development with great passion for more than 15 years. As a team, we focus on the further development of our secondary market strategies, especially in the small and midcap segment," said Richard Wilmes, Partner and Head of Secondaries at Golding.
Richard Wilmes has been with Golding for 15 years and built up the Secondaries team from 2012. The economics graduate previously worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
