Partners Group exits Gong cha, adds $1bn Asia mandate

Partners Group has exited the private credit and minority equity positions it held in Gong cha, the Taiwanese bubble tea chain, after Bain Capital acquired the brand from TA Associates in August. The exit closes a hold that began in 2019, when Partners Group acted as sole lender on a financing package of more than $200m supporting TA Associates' acquisition, with an equity position alongside.

Gong cha's store count grew from around 1,000 to nearly 2,200 and its footprint from 17 to 33 international markets. 'Gong cha was a natural fit for our strategy, where we look to provide credit solutions to growing companies with strong competitive advantages and top-quality management teams,' said Zongwen Tan, head of direct lending Asia at Partners Group, who added that the firm continues to see 'great opportunities across the Asia region in line with our relative value approach.'

Last week Partners Group closed a $1bn private credit mandate with a major institutional investor in Asia, a book earmarked for senior and junior direct lending opportunities across the region, and the firm is marking 15 years of activity in Asian private credit. It is not alone: global asset managers are expanding into Japan and the wider Asia-Pacific as allocators push private-debt dollars toward the region, a theme this publication has tracked.

Moody's said in July that it expects Asia-Pacific private credit to grow faster than in the US and Europe, driven by financing needs across a range of sectors, though it does expect fundraising and deployment in the region to slow in the near term. Read against the fresh mandate, the Gong cha exit argues that slowdown is a deployment problem, not an allocation problem: institutional money is still being committed to senior and junior lenders in Asia even as the pace of putting it to work cools; if allocators were truly stepping back, this mandate would not have closed. If deployment does slow, the mandate becomes a war chest waiting on repricing; if Asian dealflow holds, the growth outlook starts to look conservative.

The exit is also the quiet counter-example to the reset that has direct lenders selling assets as origination volume halves and pitching selection over exposure: a 2019 sole-lender package, underwritten on a growth story, carried while the borrower more than doubled its store count, and realized — credit and equity together — when the company was sold to another sponsor. Whether that template repeats at scale is the test of whether Asian dealflow can absorb the capital Partners Group is now committed to deploying.