Private equity firms will rely heavily on the support of sovereign wealth funds and pension funds when for their next round of fundraising, according to the co-head of one of Europe’s biggest private equity firms, with question marks hanging over banks and insurers as future sources of capital.

Speaking at a Debtwire conference, Mark Corbidge, co-head of private equity at UK firm Doughty Hanson, said that "pension funds and sovereign wealth funds will constitute the main source of funding" for firms raising new funds. Corbidge said that the ability of firms to raise new funds of a not too dissimilar size to their previous funds "will depend on whether they have stuck to their business model or gone off-piste, away from (what they outlined) in their [fund marketing documents]".