Europe evergreen funds, ranked: who actually delivers
One European private-equity evergreen compounded at nearly 13% a year and beat the stock market it’s built to replace. Another — same “private equity” label — returned just 2.5%. We ranked every European evergreen with a real track record, net of fees; that gap repeats in every asset class. The label barely moves the outcome. The fund decides it.
How we ranked them
- Universe — the 34 European evergreen funds with more than 3 years of track record.
- Share class — each fund’s best-performing EUR class: its lowest-fee institutional line.
- Metric — 3-year net return, annualised.
The fund matters more than the class
Each class below runs from its worst fund to its best. The bars overlap — in private equity and real estate, the gap between the weakest and strongest fund is wider than the gap between whole classes. The class sets a floor and ceiling; the fund decides the rest.
Read across the classes and the point sharpens: a strong manager in a modest class beat most private-equity funds, while a weak one gave back the entire premium of the class it sits in. The label on the fund told you far less than the manager behind it.
EU evergreen ranking
| Fund | 3Y | Since incep. | vs median | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
NextStage Croissance FR NextStage AM | 12.9% | 4.5% | +6.4 pt | 2016 |
SCSL Global Private Equity ELTIF LU Schroders Capital | 10.2% | 6.6% | +3.7 pt | 2022 |
NB Global Private Equity Access Fund LU Neuberger Berman | 9.0% | 8.1% | +2.5 pt | 2023 |
GF Lumyna Private Equity World FR Lumyna | 7.7% | 9.0% | +1.0 pt | 2020 |
Global Private Assets GPA LU Hamilton Lane | 7.3% | 10.8% | +0.8 pt | 2020 |
The read. MSCI World compounded at about 12% a year over five years, and close to 20% over three. Over five years the best evergreen PE matched it — NextStage even edged it (12.8%); over three, with public equities on a tear, none came close. Evergreen’s real edge here is lower volatility, not a bigger number.
| Fund | 3Y | Since incep. | vs median | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Blackstone European Private Credit (ECRED) LU Blackstone | 9.1% | 9.4% | +2.6 pt | 2022 |
Hamilton Lane Senior Credit Opportunities LU Hamilton Lane | 8.4% | 8.8% | +1.9 pt | 2023 |
Partners Group Private Loans LU Partners Group | 6.5% | 4.5% | +0.0 pt | 2016 |
Pictet Alt – Distressed & Special Sit. LU Pictet Asset Management | 6.1% | — | −0.4 pt | 2020 |
Tikehau Financement Entreprises FR Tikehau | 4.5% | 4.5% | −2.0 pt | 2021 |
The read. Blackstone’s ECRED and Hamilton Lane’s senior book are the two that out-earned or matched the European leveraged-loan market they lend into; Partners Group, Pictet and Tikehau gave a point or more back to it¹. Public floating-rate credit repriced fast as rates climbed, and a liquid sleeve plus fees is a hard combination to beat against it.
| Fund | 3Y | Since incep. | vs median | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Eiffel Infrastructures Vertes ELTIF FR Eiffel | 5.5% | 5.6% | +0.9 pt | 2022 |
GF Infrastructures Durables FR Infranity | 4.7% | 4.6% | +0.1 pt | 2020 |
AXA Avenir Infrastructure FR BNP Paribas Asset Management | 4.4% | 5.8% | −0.2 pt | 2020 |
klimaVest LU Commerz Real | 3.5% | 3.4% | −1.1 pt | 2020 |
The read. The benchmark flatters the listed side here: the “50/50” index² is equity infrastructure, and the core private funds trail it — an unfair fight against a higher-beta comparator. The standout is Eiffel Infrastructures Vertes, green infrastructure debt, which sits about two points above euro green bonds⁴, its natural reference. Barely two points separate the whole field.
| Fund | 3Y | Since incep. | vs median | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Eurazeo Private Value Europe 3 FR Eurazeo | 6.8% | 5.8% | +2.5 pt | 2018 |
The Partners Fund LU Partners Group | 4.3% | 7.4% | +0.0 pt | 2019 |
Tikehau Private Assets FR Tikehau | 1.3% | 1.8% | −3.0 pt | 2017 |
The read. Only Eurazeo Private Value Europe 3 kept pace with a plain 60/40 portfolio; the two multi-manager funds trailed it, Tikehau’s by a wide margin. That gap is the price of diversification in a window when public 60/40 rebounded hard — paid, in these funds, with materially lower volatility.
| Fund | 3Y | Since incep. | vs median | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Entrepreneurs & Immobilier FR Entrepreneur Invest | 5.9% | 5.3% | +7.5 pt | 2020 |
Elevation Capital Immo FR Elevation Capital Partners | −1.4% | −0.4% | +0.2 pt | 2020 |
UBS Real Estate Selection – Global LU UBS Asset Management | −1.6% | 3.8% | +0.0 pt | 2015 |
Pictet Real Estate Capital Elevation Core+ LU Pictet Asset Management | −1.8% | 0.3% | −0.2 pt | 2020 |
SwissLife ESG Dynapierre FR Swiss Life Asset Managers | −3.9% | 1.8% | −2.3 pt | 2011 |
The read. This is the class the rate shock hit hardest: four of the five funds are underwater over three years. Against a listed-property market that also fell, they lose by less than the raw numbers suggest — but only Entrepreneurs & Immobilier, a debt-flavoured strategy, is genuinely positive, and it cleared its CMBS benchmark³ by around five points. Relative to the market they replace, real estate held up; on absolute return, it mostly did not.
One caveat on the gap: it measures return, not risk — these funds run at a fraction of the volatility of the indices they trail, in a window where an AI-fuelled equity rally set an unusually high bar.
France got there first, Europe is following
France is heavily overrepresented among European evergreens with a three-year-plus track record, because it opened private markets to individuals first: assurance-vie and the 2019 loi PACTE let French savers hold evergreen private funds years before the rest of Europe.
The rest of Europe is catching up through its own doors: the UK via Long Term Asset Funds for workplace pensions (2021), Italy via tax-advantaged PIR plans and a booming ELTIF market led by Azimut, Germany via its old tradition of open-ended retail real-estate funds, Spain via private-bank distribution. The real equaliser is ELTIF 2.0, the 2024 rewrite that scrapped the €10,000 minimum and made these funds genuinely retail EU-wide, so the next table will look a good deal less French.