Metage calls on Pantheon International for greater transparency

Metage asks for 'more granularity' from private equity giant.

Pantheon International (PIN) was tight-lipped at a broker conference in London last week when questioned by activist investor Metage Capital why it hadn’t received an adequate response to its open letter.

Following a private equity panel discussing a resilient 2025 for the sector, with deal volumes both higher and larger by the end of the year, Metage’s chief investment officer Tom Sharp said he was ‘encouraged’ by the ‘positive noises’ around quarter four performance. 

However, he also voiced frustration that PIN hadn’t responded to any of the ‘material questions’ set out in Metage’s public letter to the board back in December. 

The letter urged the £1.6bn trust, which invests around half its assets in third party private equity funds and half in direct co-investments in unquoted companies, to do more to narrow its double-digit discount, proposing a ‘step 4’ to what it called PIN’s ‘interminable strategic process’.

As interest rates edged up in 2022, PIN’s discount widened to a trough of just below 50% and remained jammed in the 30-40% range for the next three years. More recently, the gap has narrowed to 26.2% as of yesterday, which is bang on average for its peers in the Association of Investment Companies’ private equity class, excluding 3i Group (III). 

PIN launched a strategic review in October 2022 to address the discount gulf, settling on an ongoing three-step plan that was refined last year. This included a £200m share buyback programme, which has now been exceeded. 

Metage’s letter recommended the board take advantage of low discounts in the secondary private equity market to dispose of at least £500m of assets, using the proceeds to buy back shares. It also asked for a more detailed breakdown of performance and clearer strategy to tackle underperformance against the MSCI World over one, three, five, and 10 years.

Addressing manager Charlotte Morris in person last week, Sharp re-emphasised some of these points. This time, he focused on a three-year time horizon, asking the manager whether she agreed with his calculation that, stripping out the effect of buybacks, returns from the trust had averaged just 0.3% a year in this time. 

He again called for more ‘more granularity’ on particular investments made since 2021 and how they had performed against PIN’s expectations. 

PIN confirmed with Citywire that chair Tony Morgan had responded to the letter at least ‘to acknowledge the points made’ and ‘to assure’ Metage that the trust remains ‘assiduously focused on addressing the discount and delivering long-term value for all shareholders’.

It highlighted that since 2023, the trust has:

  • Implemented a £300m+ buyback programme.
  • Strengthened PIN’s balance sheet with a revised capital structure.
  • Introduced (and subsequently refined) a capital allocation policy under which it will proactively allocate capital to share buybacks when the discount is wide.
  • Refreshed the board to add additional directors with significant private equity experience who can robustly support and challenge our manager on investment strategy and performance.

PIN added that it has been ‘clear’ that it will look to take advantage of a more liquid private equity secondary market to selectively dispose of assets where it believes it makes ‘economic sense’ to do so.

‘We are acutely aware that there is still significant work to be done to close the discount and deliver enhanced shareholder value, and we are working very hard to achieve this,’ a spokesperson from PIN said.

As of December, Metage has a relatively small 1.1% holding in the trust but is not the only activist on the register – AVI’s MIGO Opportunities (MIGO) built its stake through the latter half of 2025 and Saba Capital initiated a new position.

With interims looming, we can expect to hear more from PIN later this month.