LGT Capital Partners Names Sascha Gruber CEO of $120 Billion Manager

LGT Capital Partners has named Sascha Gruber its Chief Executive Officer, handing the top job at a firm with more than $120 billion in assets under management to an executive who joined in 2002. The move continues a leadership transition at the global alternative investment manager and keeps the succession firmly internal.

Gruber arrives with more than two decades of service behind him. He has sat on the Executive Committee and on multiple investment committees, and the firm credits him as an important contributor to the development of its private markets business — particularly its secondaries strategy. He also played a significant role in expanding international operations and strengthening the firm's presence in the Americas.

Who is Gruber replacing?

He succeeds Roberto Paganoni, who shaped the firm's long-term strategy and investment philosophy over nearly three decades. Under Paganoni, LGT Capital Partners grew into a diversified global alternative investment manager serving more than 750 institutional clients. That client base spans approximately 50 countries, supported by roughly 1,000 professionals across 16 offices.

The investment platform Paganoni leaves behind is broad. The firm allocates across five areas: private markets, multi-alternatives, diversifying strategies, sustainable investments, and impact strategies.

What does the change mean for investors?

Practically speaking: continuity. The firm said it will keep pursuing its existing investment strategy under the long-term ownership of the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. It will also continue committing its own capital alongside clients as a principal investor — an approach designed to keep the firm's interests aligned with those of its investors.

So if you're an LP in one of LGT Capital Partners' funds, the ownership structure, the alignment model, and the strategy roadmap stay intact. What changes is the person responsible for further developing the firm's global investment platform, and that person is a 23-year insider rather than an external hire.

What the principals are saying

H.S.H. Prince Max von und zu Liechtenstein, Chairman of LGT Capital Partners, framed the appointment as both continuity and renewal: "Sascha shares the principles that have guided the firm from the beginning, and I am convinced that he will successfully lead LGT Capital Partners while bringing his own perspective to shape its future direction."

Gruber himself signaled confidence in the handover: "LGT Capital Partners is very well positioned and has a clear vision for the future."

The wording from both sides is telling. The firm is not positioning this as a strategic pivot but as a generational handoff — a longtime operator taking the controls of a platform he helped build, with a mandate to develop it rather than remake it.

The so-what

Succession at firms owned by a single family is rarely a mystery, and this one follows the script: a principal-family chairman, an insider CEO, and an unchanged investment approach. For the firm's institutional clients, the bet is that Gruber's decades on its investment committees translate into steady execution at the top — with his secondaries background and Americas experience the areas most likely to bear his fingerprints going forward.