Coller International Partners VII (CIP VII)

Jeremy Coller, the firm's founder and Chief Investment Officer, leads the investment committee for CIP VII alongside a senior partnership group that includes Managing Partner Timothy Howarth. The firm has operated under Coller's investment authority since 1990, with a flat partnership structure that requires consensus on transactions above a materiality threshold. Day-to-day deal execution for CIP VII is run by the New York and London investment teams.

Coller's origination model relies on three decades of direct relationships with LPs and GPs globally rather than intermediated auctions. The firm's Coller Research Institute publishes the widely-read LP Barometer survey, creating an ongoing dialogue with institutional investors that surfaces rebalancing needs before mandates go to market. Coller also acts as a direct liquidity partner to GPs executing continuation vehicles and tender offers, sourcing transactions that never appear in competitive processes.

CIP VII executes three transaction types: traditional LP portfolio sales where an institution sells a bundle of fund interests; GP-led restructurings that recapitalize an existing fund or move an asset into a new vehicle; and structured preferred-equity solutions that provide liquidity to funds without transferring ownership. Deal sizes for CIP VII span roughly $50 million to over $1 billion, with the fund acting as lead or sole buyer on flagship transactions across buyout, venture, credit, and infrastructure (per the firm).

Coller Capital is a traditional fund-of-funds manager, not a family office. The firm raises capital from external institutional LPs — sovereign wealth funds, public pension funds, insurers, and endowments — and pools it into closed-end secondaries funds like CIP VII. Jeremy Coller founded and controls the management company, but the investment vehicles themselves are commingled institutional funds.

CIP VII is a dedicated secondaries fund and does not make primary commitments to new private-equity funds. Coller Capital has operated exclusively within the secondaries market since 1998, purchasing existing LP interests on the secondary market and providing liquidity solutions to GPs rather than deploying capital into blind-pool primary fundraises. This differentiates the firm from multi-strategy fund-of-funds managers.

Coller Capital is widely considered a pioneer of institutional secondaries investing, having launched its first dedicated secondaries fund in 1998 after transitioning from a venture-capital primary platform (per Financial News). The firm set successive records for fund size across its vehicle series, with CIP VII holding the title of largest dedicated secondaries fund globally at its final close in 2015. Coller's pricing methodology — valuing entire portfolios rather than individual company stakes — became an industry standard for large, complex LP-stake sales.

By operating only dedicated secondaries funds with no primary fund-of-funds, co-investment, or advisory mandates, Coller avoids conflicts that arise when a manager simultaneously buys from and commits to the same GPs. Sellers engaging with CIP VII know Coller has no existing LP relationship to protect with any underlying manager, which the firm argues is critical for transactions where confidentiality and execution certainty are primary seller concerns.