Selloff mode

New York, June 8: AXA Private Equity, the buyout arm of French group AXA, said on Wednesday that it would buy a $1.7-billion portfolio from Citigroup that included stakes in various companies and private equity funds.

AXA said the deal, involving 207 positions in buyout funds, was one of the largest transactions ever in the secondary market for private equity stakes.

Dominique Senequier, the head of AXA Private Equity and one of the rare women at the helm in the sector, said at a conference call on Wednesday that the assets included stakes in funds from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the Blackstone group, the Carlyle group and Providence Equity Partners, among others.

In the company statement, she said AXA’s “close working relationship with Citigroup,” and the visibility of its assets, had helped to close the deal.

On the discount AXA had paid, Senequier would only say that the firm was “happy with the buying conditions”.

For Citigroup, the sale is an exit from various investments of the bank’s proprietary capital, yet another withdrawal by an American bank from deploying its own funds in private equity.

“This sale marks the completion of a significant share of Citi Holdings’ proprietary private equity investments and demonstrates the progress the Citi Holdings team is making in reducing non-core assets on our balance sheet,” Mark Mason, chief operating officer of Citi Holdings, said in a statement.

Last week, under pressure to conform with new rules on what kinds of risks banks can take, the Bank of America spun off a private equity fund, now known as North Cove Partners, with about $6 billion of assets under management.

AXA Private Equity bought $1.9 billion in private equity stakes from Bank of America a little more than a year ago, and has about $25 billion under management altogether.