How a lesser-known Swedish private equity giant plans to win over US retail investors

• EQT is the world's second-largest backstage equity firm, but it's not a household sanction successful the US.

• Peter Aliprantis, EQT's US backstage wealthiness head, aims to alteration that and pull affluent investors.

• He walked BI done the firm's plans to triumph implicit retail investors and wherefore it's grown truthful much.

EQT is 1 of the largest backstage equity investors successful the satellite — yet astir affluent Americans person hardly heard of it. That's the uphill conflict facing Peter Aliprantis, the Swedish firm's caput of backstage wealthiness successful the Americas, arsenic EQT tries to transportation successful a marketplace dominated by Wall Street brands with plentifulness of CNBC airtime.

"Most radical successful the United States are not acquainted with us, and the mode we accidental it, we're the best-kept secret," Aliprantis told Business Insider.

Private Equity International ranked the steadfast arsenic the second-largest backstage equity firm, with $312 cardinal of assets nether management. It raised much than $113 cardinal successful third-party backstage equity superior from 2020 to the extremity of 2024, putting it up of Blackstone, and conscionable down KKR truthful acold this decade.

Like galore of its competitors, it's turning to backstage wealthiness arsenic the newest root of growth. The industry's alteration of fundraising absorption comes arsenic backstage equity firms are dilatory to instrumentality currency to investors, and over-allocation among organization investors means that organization backing is slowing.

But the aforesaid reasons that the steadfast isn't arsenic well-known successful America are really an advantage, Aliprantis said.

In a satellite wherever debt-heavy buyouts are proving much hard and an progressively concentrated American backstage marketplace is pushing immoderate to put internationally, a planetary industrialist attack tin beryllium attractive.

EQT has returned superior astatine a mean pace, with $23 cardinal successful distributions for the twelvemonth ending June 2025. The steadfast has besides been gathering a backstage wealthiness concern for the past 4 years, which accounts for 10% of its existent assets. The steadfast has a extremity to scope betwixt 15-20% during its existent $100 cardinal fundraising cycle, according to its second-quarter report.

Aliprantis walked Business Insider done the firm's transportation to fiscal advisors and backstage wealthiness organisation networks, explaining wherefore its planetary scope is simply a important vantage successful 2025.

The cardinal for EQT, Aliprantis said, is for the steadfast to connection idiosyncratic investors the "exact aforesaid deals" it gives organization investors.

EQT was founded successful 1994 arsenic a spin-off from concern holding institution Investor AB, but the firm's past stretches backmost to Sweden's Wallenberg family. The Wallenbergs, called the "Rockefellers of Europe," person created an empire of concern holdings including monolithic stakes successful Sweden's biggest firms, similar ABB, AstraZeneca, oregon Saab.