FOR PROFESSIONAL CLIENTS, QUALIFIED CLIENTS AND QUALIFIED INVESTORS ONLY
MAG at One Year
HANNAH
A year ago, we launched the Multi Alternatives Growth Fund, MAG, with a clear ambition, to help democratise access to private markets through a single, evergreen portfolio.
The thinking behind MAG was rooted in something we were hearing consistently from clients. The most important growth themes of our time, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, the energy transition, are increasingly developing within private markets. However, for most investors, accessing those opportunities in a diversified and scalable way has been genuinely difficult. Traditional private market structures tend to be narrow in scope, operationally complex, and hard to integrate into a broader portfolio.
MAG was designed to address that. It combines private equity, private credit and real assets in one portfolio, with institutional quality construction in an evergreen format.
Structured as an ELTIF, the Fund also offers more regular liquidity than traditional closed-end private market vehicles, making it easier for investors to build private markets exposure alongside the rest of their portfolio.
HANNAH
One year in, we're encouraged by the progress. The Fund has grown to approximately 570 million euros in assets under management, raised entirely from third-party investors across more than 20 distribution partners globally. Since inception, MAG has delivered a net return of just over ten percent, supported by a combination of realised gains, valuation growth and income across the portfolio.
What's been equally important is how the portfolio has held up in more challenging conditions. Through the market volatility we experienced earlier this year, the Fund remained substantially stable. For us, that's a meaningful proof point. It reflects the diversified, multi-strategy nature of the portfolio doing what it was designed to do.
Guglielmo, as the lead portfolio manager, talk us through how the portfolio has come together.
GUGLIELMO
The portfolio today comprises more than 50 investments across asset classes, and we continue to build toward our target allocation over the ramp-up period.
We moved early into secondary investments, acquiring seasoned portfolios at attractive valuations.
Earlier this year, we invested in Project Horizion, a company that operates in the consumer healthcare market in the US.
This was a deliberate decision to generate returns during the ramp-up and to smooth the path that private market investors typically experience in the early years of a fund.
We also used this period to plant the seeds of long-term growth, building thematic exposure to areas where we see structural trends developing and where private markets offer access that public markets often can't replicate. That includes positions in frontier AI businesses and data centre investments, as well as infrastructure platforms supporting the energy transition and energy security.
For example, in the portfolio today, we hold Project Gibraltar, our investment into Anthropic, a company that needs no introduction.
Some of these positions have already delivered strong early outcomes for the Fund.
For example, our investment into Project Gaston, Groq, has already exited after three months of holding period after a strategic acquisition.
And finally, we've built in diversifying strategies, areas like entertainment royalties and other niche real assets, that behave quite differently from traditional markets and help broaden the portfolio's sources of return.
An example of this is our investment in Project Monroe, a company that is focused on acquiring and managing film and TV profit participation rights.
Looking ahead, the current environment, with greater dispersion and pockets of dislocation across private markets, is creating selective entry points for patient, long-term capital. We have a deep pipeline across asset classes, and we're well positioned to keep building with the same discipline that's guided us over the first year.
HANNAH
One of the most interesting things about the past year has been how different types of investors have found ways to use MAG within their portfolios.
For some, it's a first step into private markets. A way to gain broad, diversified exposure through a single professionally managed portfolio, without the complexity of assembling multiple specialist funds.
For others who already have some private markets exposure, MAG serves as a complement, adding diversification and filling gaps across existing holdings.
Asset allocation and diversification does not guarantee profit or prevent loss.
And for more institutional clients, we're increasingly seeing it used as a core allocation, a diversified foundation at the centre of a private markets programme, which is then built upon with more concentrated or specialist strategies.
That range of use cases is by design. We built MAG to be flexible enough to serve multiple portfolio contexts, and I think that adaptability is one of its most valuable features.
GUGLIELMO
I'd also highlight what sits behind the Fund, which is the sourcing. Being part of BlackRock gives us access across public company leadership teams, private market sponsors and global capital markets. That allows us to originate and access opportunities, including in some of the most sought-after private businesses in the world, that most investors simply can't reach on their own.
HANNAH
And when you combine that sourcing advantage with the breadth of the portfolio and the accessibility of the structure, we think it offers something that's genuinely hard to replicate.
We're proud of what we've built in MAG's first year, and we believe the opportunity ahead remains compelling. The current environment plays to the strengths of a diversified, disciplined approach, and we look forward to the year ahead.
Please see the MAG fund deck in supporting materials for the exactly disclaimers used.