Ares Secondaries (formerly Landmark Partners)

Landmark Partners was founded in 1989 as an independent secondaries manager and became known for investing across not just private equity fund stakes but also real estate and infrastructure secondaries — a broader remit than most peers of its era.

Ares Management completed its acquisition of Landmark Partners in June 2021 for roughly $1 billion, at which point Landmark managed more than $19.6 billion. The business now operates as the Ares Secondaries Group, extending Ares's existing credit and private equity platform into dedicated secondaries.

The combination gave Ares a secondaries capability spanning the same three asset classes Landmark specialized in, positioning it to buy LP stakes not just in buyout funds but in real estate and infrastructure vehicles as well — a differentiator from secondaries platforms focused on private equity alone.

The business buys LP stakes across private equity, real estate and infrastructure funds, a scope inherited from Landmark Partners, which was among the earlier firms to treat real assets secondaries as a distinct discipline rather than an afterthought to private equity.

Sellers include institutions rebalancing property and infrastructure exposure — a segment where the reasons for selling often have more to do with the valuation cycle in those asset classes than with any individual fund. Reading real-asset secondaries requires attention to how the underlying assets are appraised, since appraised values move more slowly than market sentiment.

Secondaries desks and franchises that operate inside a larger private-markets manager, usually built by acquiring an independent specialist and folding it into a broader platform.

This site groups buyers into four categories, because the category tells you more about how a firm behaves than its size does. See the rest of theplatform within a diversified managergroup in the directory.