People

People & Governance — Do Management Deserve Trust?

Verdict: B+. Partners Group is a founder-built, founder-aligned firm where the three 1996 co-founders still own roughly 15% of the equity, sit on the board, and the wider firm has nearly CHF 1.9 billion of its own money committed alongside clients [5]. That depth of skin in the game is the bull case. The brake on the grade is concentration of control: only four of eight directors are independent, the Chairman is executive, and related-party dealings with founder-controlled entities are growing — exactly the things an outside shareholder should watch as the founders move into succession.

Sources: founder stakes & significant shareholders [2]; firm co-investment [5]; board composition (4 of 8 independent) [1].

The people running the company

Partners Group is run by an Executive Team of nine, led since 2018 by David Layton, CEO and a Partner, who came up through the Private Equity business and is based in the firm's Americas headquarters in Denver — an unusual arrangement for a Swiss-listed company, with the CEO splitting time between Colorado and Zug [13]. The bench mixes long-tenured insiders (President Juri Jenkner and CRO Roberto Cagnati, both since 2004) with credentialed outside hires: CFO Joris Gröflin joined in 2024 from Axpo Holding, and Head of Private Equity Wolf-Henning Scheider is a former CEO of ZF Group and MAHLE [14].

Succession is live. The firm announced in December 2025 that Head of Client Solutions Sarah Brewer and General Counsel Andreas Knecht would step down from the Executive Team at year-end, with Ana Campos (HR) and Anette Waygood (Co-Head Compliance & Legal) joining from 1 January 2026 [15]. Press reporting in June 2026 also flagged co-founder Urs Wietlisbach carving out an independent unit within the founders' PG3 AG vehicle as part of broader succession planning — a reminder that the generational handover from the founders is now underway.

Source: FY2025 Annual Report, Executive Team profiles [13] [14]; Executive Team changes [15].

Above the Executive Team sits an eight-member board: Executive Chairman Steffen Meister (a Partner, PG's CEO from 2005–2013), the three founders — Dr. Marcel Erni, Alfred Gantner and Urs Wietlisbach (all ex-Goldman Sachs, who founded the firm in 1996) — and four independent directors [1]. The independents are genuinely heavyweight: Dr. Urban Angehrn, the former CEO of FINMA, Switzerland's financial-markets regulator [8]; Anne Lester, 30 years at JP Morgan Asset Management [9]; Gaëlle Olivier, former CEO of AXA's P&C business and COO of Société Générale, who serves as Lead Independent Director; and Flora Zhao, a former BP and AES executive [10].

Compensation — heavily performance-weighted, and large

CEO David Layton's 2025 total compensation was CHF 15.93 million, of which fixed cash base salary was just CHF 0.83 million — the overwhelming majority is long-term, performance-linked: CHF 5.75 million of equity LTI and an entirely carry-based component (ExMCP) granted at a notional CHF 8.3 million that pays out only once pre-agreed investor returns are realized [3] [7]. The whole nine-person Executive Team earned CHF 67.4 million in aggregate [3]. Against group profit of CHF 1,261 million and a 55% return on equity, the CEO's pay is roughly 1.3% of net profit — high in absolute terms but structurally aligned [6].

Source: FY2025 Annual Report, Executive Team compensation Exhibit 17 (audited) [3].

Pay tracks realized performance rather than promises. The firm discloses David Layton's realized pay over four years, which swings with the carry actually paid out: CHF 3.0 million in 2022, CHF 6.9 million in 2023, CHF 14.3 million in 2024 and CHF 10.0 million in 2025 [7]. LTI is capped at 8x base for executives and 10x for the CEO, and minimum-shareholding guidelines require the CEO to hold at least 6x base salary in shares [7].

Source: FY2025 Annual Report, Exhibit 14 — Total realized vs. awarded compensation for David Layton [7].

Board pay is the cleanest expression of the firm's two-tier structure. The four executive board members are paid like partners — Executive Chairman Steffen Meister CHF 3.91 million and each of the three founders about CHF 2.72 million, almost entirely carry-based (MPP) — while the four independent directors receive modest, fixed cash-and-shares packages of CHF 0.34–0.45 million with no carry [4]. That split is appropriate: independents are not incentivized on fund performance, which preserves their objectivity.

Source: FY2025 Annual Report, Board compensation Exhibit 21 (audited) [4].

Alignment & skin in the game — the strongest part of the case

This is where Partners Group earns its grade. The three founders remain among the company's largest shareholders, each disclosed at roughly 5% of voting rights — Urs Wietlisbach 5.08%, Marcel Erni 5.03% and Alfred Gantner (with family) 5.03%, together about 15% — alongside BlackRock at 5.02% and UBS Fund Management at 5.01% [2] [18]. Board members held about 4.4 million shares at year-end [5].

Beyond equity, the alignment runs through the funds themselves: the board and employees had committed approximately CHF 1.9 billion of their own capital alongside clients' investment programs as of 31 December 2025 [5]. For a manager whose product is other people's capital, partners eating the same cooking is the alignment that matters most. Insider selling is modest and structured: the group bought back 19,240 treasury shares from employee-shareholders during 2025 at an average CHF 1,293.67 — routine liquidity rather than a signal of management heading for the exits [5].

Board quality & independence — capable, but not majority-independent

The independent directors are, individually, exactly who you would want overseeing a private-markets manager: a former financial-markets regulator (Angehrn), a retirement-solutions and asset-management veteran (Lester), a former insurance-and-banking COO (Olivier, the Lead Independent Director), and an energy-infrastructure operator (Zhao). The two committees that protect outside shareholders — the Risk & Audit Committee and the Nomination & Compensation Committee — are chaired by, and composed entirely of, independent directors (Olivier chairs the RAC; Zhao chairs the NCC) [11] [12]. Independent tenure is capped at ten years, and the board met five times in 2025 [16] [17].

The weakness is structural, not personal. Only four of eight directors are independent — a board that is exactly balanced, not majority-independent [1]. The roles of Chairman and CEO are not separated in the conventional sense: the Chairman is executive, and the founders also sit on the Investment Oversight Committee, keeping the people who built the firm close to its capital-allocation decisions [12]. The matrix below shows where the board is genuinely independent versus where executives and founders retain control.

Source: FY2025 Annual Report, Members of the Board of Directors and committee composition [1] [8] [10] [11].

Governance risk & related-party dealings — the watch list

Two things keep this short of an A. First, related-party transactions with founder-controlled entities are expanding. In 2025 the group capitalized CHF 14.0 million of placement fees to a related party (2024: none), earned CHF 3.4 million of management-fee income from a related party, began leasing premises to an entity controlled by key management (CHF 0.6 million of rent), and — in 2024 — acquired a royalty business outright from an entity controlled by key management personnel [5]. Each is described as conducted at arm's length and the dealings are disclosed and audited — but the trajectory, as the founders build separate vehicles (the PG3 family office) around the listed company, is the single governance dynamic an outside shareholder should monitor most closely.

Second, the June 2026 evergreen redemption gating tested management's alignment with its newest clients. Per Bloomberg, CNBC and FT reporting, Partners Group capped quarterly withdrawals at its roughly USD 8.6 billion Global Value SICAV after redemption requests neared 10% of NAV — roughly double the standard 5% gate — and the shares fell as much as 17%, their worst day since the 2006 listing. Management framed it as prudent liquidity management protecting remaining investors and reaffirmed 2026 growth guidance, and noted its private-credit evergreens (under 3% of AuM) saw no net redemptions. The episode is more a product-design and liquidity question than a governance-integrity one, but it is a real test of whether the firm's push into retail "evergreen" wealth products is fully aligned with those end-investors.

On the reassuring side, governance hygiene is intact: shareholders approved all board proposals — including the compensation report and a rising dividend (CHF 46.00 per share for 2025) — at the 2025 and 2026 AGMs with broad support, and the compensation report carries a clean statutory auditor's opinion [19].

The verdict

Source: analyst assessment derived from FY2025 Annual Report governance, compensation and related-party disclosures [1] [5].

Grade: B+. Partners Group is run by capable, deeply invested people whose pay is structured to make them rich only if clients make money — the firm has nearly CHF 1.9 billion of its own capital riding alongside investors, and the founders still own about 15% of the stock [5] [2]. That is a stronger alignment story than almost any listed financial. What holds it below an A is the concentration of control — a board only half-independent, an executive Chairman, founders embedded in investment oversight, and a widening web of related-party dealings just as the founders build their own vehicles around the company.

The single thing most likely to move the grade: how the founders' succession and their growing related-party footprint are handled. A move to a majority-independent board with a clearly separated chair, and disciplined ring-fencing of founder-controlled transactions, would push this toward A−. A messy, value-leaking handover — or related-party dealings that stop looking arm's-length — would pull it toward B−.