Aquilius
Aquilius set out to become the most trusted secondaries firm in Asia Pacific, but its self-built landing page said none of that to the institutions it courts. We designed and built the WordPress platform the firm still runs on.
A custom WordPress platform designed to the standards of the investors Aquilius serves, launched ahead of the firm’s maiden fund close and still carrying the site in 2026.
What we were solving
Aquilius Investment Partners provides liquidity solutions across Asia Pacific’s private capital markets. Founded in Singapore by Bastian Wolff and Christian Keiber, it buys and restructures private equity and real estate positions for sovereign wealth funds, endowments, insurance companies and family offices.
When Aquilius came to us in late 2022, the firm was young and the website was a placeholder. The team had built a landing page in-house, and it showed: visual inconsistencies, thin content, none of the sophistication an institutional investor expects. A firm that wanted to be the most trusted secondaries firm in Asia Pacific had a website that undercut the word “trusted” on first load.
Institutional allocators don’t respond to hard sells or loud design. They read for signals of discipline, discretion and experience. The brief we agreed with the founders was specific: professional, subtle, trustworthy, clear, high integrity. Success meant a site that could sit alongside Blackstone and Partners Group in a due diligence tab bar.
How we tackled it
Design for the reader who is judging you
The design strategy session set the register before anything was drawn. We reviewed the firms Aquilius is measured against (TR Capital, NewQuest, Blackstone, Partners Group, Ares) and built the visual language around restraint: Singapore imagery without the tourist clichés, a subtle video treatment on the home page, a loading animation built from the logo, and full-screen card layouts with GSAP animation that move the visitor through Home, About, Solutions and Contact. We also revised the logo with a new typeface and set up the firm’s LinkedIn profile, so the brand read consistently everywhere an allocator might check.
A build the firm could grow into
The site runs on a custom HTML5 WordPress child theme with Bootstrap underneath. Content is managed through Advanced Custom Fields Flexible Content modules, so the Aquilius team can add and rearrange page sections without a developer and without breaking the design system.
The launch sitemap held Investors and ESG back as a second phase, with News following close behind launch, so the site could expand as the firm did. We finished with SEO foundations, Google Analytics, multi-breakpoint testing, and CMS training through video tutorials and live sessions.
What we delivered
Aquilius now runs its site on the custom WordPress theme we built, four years on. The Investors and ESG sections planned as phase two are live, along with Team, News and Careers, all inside the design system we set in 2022.
The timing mattered too. In 2023, months after the site went live, the firm announced the final close of its maiden fund, AIP Secondary Fund I, backed by the investors the site was designed to reassure. The website didn’t raise that fund, but it was the front door every one of those allocators walked past on the way in.
What we learned
Finance clients buy confidence, and confidence is mostly subtraction. The strongest decisions on this project were the things we left out: no loud colour, no marketing exclamation, no stock-photo Singapore skyline at sunset. When the audience is a sovereign wealth fund’s diligence team, the design’s job is to remove reasons for doubt.
Build for the company the client is becoming, not the one they are today. Aquilius launched lean, but the ACF modules and the phased sitemap meant Investors, ESG and Careers could be added without a redesign.
