Secondaries Investor’s Second Thoughts

This episode is sponsored by LGT Capital Partners, Dawson Partners and Pomona Capital

Record volumes and growing liquidity pressures are pushing limited partners into the market as secondaries become a core portfolio management tool rather than a last resort. What was once viewed as a reactive measure has become a core tool for managing private equity exposure with repeat sellers now a defining feature of the landscape. Asset-class expansion is also encouraging more activity.

In this episode, Secondaries Investor editor Madeleine Farman is joined by Dawson Partners’ Yann Robard, LGT Capital Partners’ Pauline Wetter and Pomo...

This episode is sponsored by Partners Group, Lexington Partners and Davis Polk

As private wealth capital continues to flow into evergreen structures, this dry powder is having an immediate impact on secondaries volume. While estimates on just how much evergreen capital is moving into the market vary, industry participants view it as a growing force within secondaries.

In this episode, Secondaries Investor’s editor Madeleine Farman is joined by Partner’s Group’s Philip Hess, Lexington Partners’ Taylor Robinson and Davis Polk’s Christopher Healey to explore the relationship between evergreen funds targeting private wealth capital an...

In a market shaped by slower exits and macro uncertainty, infrastructure secondaries is increasingly viewed as a defensive investment strategy as LPs seek stable cashflows and downside protection.

Infrastructure secondaries saw approximately $9.5 billion of deployment in 2025, including around $5.5 billion across LP-led transactions, according to Evercore's 2025 Secondary Market Report. Among non-buyout strategies, only credit secondaries saw higher deployment volumes at roughly $20 billion last year.

In this episode, Americas correspondent Hannah Zhang is joined by Wandy Hoh, head of secondaries and co-investments at Macquarie Asset Management, and Jeremy Duksin, co-head of the GP Solutions Group at Baird.<...

How is market sentiment shaping secondaries fundraising and deal activity?

In this episode of PEI Group’s Data Dive podcast, PEI’s senior content producer, Evie Rusman, is joined by Secondaries Investor editor Madeleine Farman and PEI head of special projects for private equity Louise Fordham to discuss the findings from the Secondaries Investor Global Market Survey 2026. The survey, conducted in partnership with Goodwin, polled LPs, GPs, secondaries buyers and the intermediary community about market trends, transaction processes, deployment issues, regulation and more.

PEI’s new Data Dive miniseries digs into our proprietary data, surveys and ra...

This episode is sponsored by Dawson Partners, StepStone Group and Davis Polk

Ongoing uncertainty within private markets over the past year has helped fuel interest in credit secondaries.

Institutions have turned to private credit looking for relatively stable returns. Furthermore, managers and LPs are turning to the secondaries market for liquidity as they look to manage their own portfolios.

“Those have dovetailed together to create this tailwind behind private credit secondaries,” Davis Polk partner Sijia Cai said on the latest edition of Secondaries Investor’s Second Thoughts podcast. “It has the best of both wor...

Secondaries volumes to date in 2026 are ahead of what they were at the same period last year, driven by a lack of distributions, with investors taking advantage of strong prices.

LPs have become even more sophisticated in the past few years. A factor that is aiding their sophistication is the rise of asset class-focused products, offering them the ability to bring portfolios to market that are met with the right cost of capital.

New entrants are coming to the market in earnest. These players represented 16 percent of the $226 billion of deal volume seen last year...

The European secondaries market saw a string of sizeable deals across the course of 2025, with expected growth continued both this year and beyond.

European managers CapVest, Montagu, Norvestor and PAI Partners secured CV-on-CV transactions over the course of last year, with CVC, Inflexion and TDR Capital also securing sizeable CVs, to name just a few. Belgian holding company Groupe Bruxelles Lambert and APG Asset Management also scored large LP-led portfolio deals.

In this episode, editor Madeleine Farman is joined by Gabriel Möllerberg, managing director at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Lea Lazaric Calvert, a senior ma...

This episode is sponsored by Lexington Partners, LGT Capital Partners and Davis Polk

In 2024, GP-led deals hit a record of $71 billion in transaction volume, accounting for 44 percent of the total secondaries market volume of $160 billion, according to Evercore’s FY 2024 Secondary Market Review. This is significant and marks the increasing popularity of continuation vehicles as an exit route.

In this episode, Secondaries Investor senior editor Adam Le is joined by Lexington Partners’ Jeffrey Bloom, LGT Capital Partners’ Brooke Zhou and Davis Polk’s Leor Landa.

The trio explore how GP-led transactions have rapidly grown in...

GP stake secondaries transactions are steadily gaining traction as investors seek exposure to leading private equity firms. Though still in their early stages, these deals are often described as offering some of the most attractive risk-return profiles in today’s volatile market.

In this episode, Jon Costello, founder of Devon Park Advisors, and Christopher Zook, founder and chief investment officer of CAZ Investments, join Americas correspondent Hannah Zhang in a discussion on the forces driving the rise of GP stake secondaries.

With approximately $10 billion in assets, CAZ Investments has committed a large portion of its ca...

This episode is sponsored by Lexington Partners, Proskauer and StepStone Group

The secondaries market is benefitting from private markets' push into the private wealth space, with managers either launching secondaries-focused vehicles or secondaries making up a meaningful component of many evergreen funds.

Evergreen funds raised $16 billion in the first half of 2025 alone, 60 percent of which is dedicated to secondaries capital, according to estimates from Campbell Lutyens included in its H1 Secondary Market Overview Report.

In this episode, editor Madeleine Farman is joined by Lexington Partners' Taylor Robinson and StepStone Group's Brian Borton, both...

This episode first appeared on The Infrastructure Investor Podcast

In this special crossover episode from our affiliate title, Infrastructure Investor editor-in-chief Bruno Alves sits down with Madeleine Farman, editor of Secondaries Investor, as well as Infrastructure Investor Americas editor Zak Bentley, to talk about the infrastructure secondaries market.

The discussion tracks the evolution of the burgeoning infrastructure secondaries market, the asset class’s best-in-class pricing compared to other private asset classes, how LP-led deals rule by volume but GP-led transactions end up being the most sizeable, the outsized role of continuation funds, the promise of th...

This episode is sponsored by Pomona Capital and Proskauer

While the Trump administration's tariff announcements and the subsequent unfurling of uncertainty globally does create some headaches, it also creates a tailwind for the LP-led secondaries market.

"What the market has trouble adjusting to is uncertainty. And what happens in times of uncertainty, like the times we're dealing in now, is that [M&A and IPO] transactions tend to pull away," Michael Granoff, founder and chief executive of Pomona Capital, said in the latest edition of Secondaries Investor's Second Thoughts podcast.

"That uncertainty does...

As volatility pushes real estate investors to look for liquidity, secondaries can provide some attractive solutions. Now, StepStone Group has a record-setting fund in its arsenal to seize the opportunities.

StepStone now manages the largest dedicated real estate secondaries vehicle raised to date having closed StepStone Real Estate Partners V on $3.77 billion in commitments last month. An additional $730 million from separately managed accounts brings the total haul to $4.5 billion.

In this episode, Jeffrey Giller, head of real estate at StepStone, speaks to reporter Silas Sloan on how the fundraise came together, what the firm is...

Private credit secondaries has the potential to surpass private equity in deal volume over the longer term as more secondaries investors pursue yield and diversification amid market volatility.

Over the past year, several billion-dollar-plus deals have emerged in the credit secondaries space, including Coller Capital's recent acquisition of a $1.6 billion portfolio from American National and TPG Angelo Gordon's $1.5 billion continuation fund. Firms like Coller, Pantheon, Apollo Global Management and Ares Management have also launched dedicated credit secondaries strategies.

In this episode, Michael Schad, head of secondaries at Coller Capital, and Gerald Cooper, global co-head of s...

Within private markets asset classes, there is certainly further room for improvement when it comes to diversity of talent – and one secondaries professional is taking matters into his own hands.

Diversity in Secondaries Initiative (DISI) is a non-profit organisation focused on creating a more collective environment within the secondaries market for people of colour. Primarily, it seeks to find more opportunities to mentor, train and ultimately fill junior-level roles in the market with students that are in undergraduate programmes.

In this episode, Peter Wright – a director advising on NAV lending and GP financing at Hark Capit...

Delights and gripes relating to the continuation fund market were shared at PEI Group's NEXUS 2025 conference. A critical question was raised: do LPs need to take a more proactive approach to secondaries?

In one of the panels, Jeremy Coller, founder of Coller Capital, encouraged LPs to do just that – proactively manage their exposure as more GPs mull CVs for assets they want to hold longer regardless of their 'limited' status. For LPs like the New York City Retirement Systems, however, the preferred status quo option when faced with a CV opportunity is to "do nothing", according to Ene...

This episode is sponsored by Evercore, Davis Polk and Dawson Partners

The secondaries market sits at a crossroads. Never before have LPs been presented with such an array of different liquidity offerings to back. There are specialised secondaries funds focusing on healthcare, on impact investing, on real assets in Asia or on acquiring direct minority equity stakes in companies in India. There are funds focusing on writing large cheques to multi-billion-dollar single-asset continuation funds; and there are funds focusing on making late primary commitments to buyout funds that are still in their fundraising mode. In short, if...

How does your compensation this year compare with that of your peers?

In this episode, Secondaries Investor editor Madeleine Farman sits down with Kylie Hart, co-founder and Partner at global executive search firm Norgay Partners.

From her vantage point as an expert in private equity secondaries recruitment, Hart gives an overview of market compensation on both the buy-side and the sell-side following a record year for secondaries activity in 2024.

The pair also discuss the differences in pay between secondaries and private equity strategies, the outlook for people moves following a flurry of activity t...

The secondaries market saw another record year for deal volume, with advisory reports pinning the overall figures somewhere between $152 billion and $165 billion.

In this episode, Secondaries Investor editor Madeleine Farman, senior reporter Hannah Zhang and reporter Silas Sloan dig into advisory reports. They walk through key themes that emerged, including the rising impact of evergreen capital and its effects on deal activity to date, the increasing scale of GP-led deals, the increasing scale of the buyer universe, right through to predictions on LP-led and GP-led activity for the year ahead.

Read more at Secondaries Investor:<...

Australian superannuation fund Aware Super is heading towards its private markets allocation targets after a period of build-up and growth.

The fund, which manages around $110 billion on behalf of nurses and teachers, launched its first office outside of Australia in 2023, putting boots on the ground in London.

Damien Webb, the superfund’s deputy chief investment officer and head of international, sat down with PEI senior editor Adam Le. In a wide-ranging interview, the pair discuss how GP-leds are complementary with the skills Aware Super has built out around co-investment, Webb’s views on LP-led secondaries as i...

The secondaries market is bullish that 2025 will be another record year for secondaries market activity. Regionally, North America is set to continue its dominance in dealmaking, Europe is expected to throw up interesting opportunities that offer portfolio diversification, and increasing manager sophistication could lead to more GP-led opportunities in APAC.

In this episode, Secondaries Investor's Adam Le, Madeleine Farman and Silas Sloan discuss the secondaries market's volume expectations for the year ahead and delve into key topics making rounds in the market, from US president-elect Donald Trump, to the impact of evergreen funds on the market and...

It's common to peel back the onion on key events and trends seen across financial markets. As the secondaries market heads for what is predicted to be a record-setting year for volume, we decided to practice the phrase quite literally.

Madeleine Farman, senior reporter and host of the Second Thoughts, and senior editor Adam Le are joined by Carlo Pirzio-Biroli, head of CVC Secondary Partners, and Ted Cardos, co-head of Kirkland & Ellis's European liquidity solutions team, with the group letting a basket of onions decide the talking points.

Pirzio-Biroli and Cardos discuss key wins, disappointments...

The opportunity set for the tail-end secondaries market has grown from $198 billion 10 years ago to $916 billion today, according to estimates from legacy specialist Hollyport Capital.

In this episode, John Carter, managing partner and chief executive of Hollyport, and Etienne Deshormes, managing partner and CEO of private markets adviser Elm Capital, join senior reporter Madeleine Farman for a discussion on the topic.

The three discuss the structural drivers of the tail-end secondaries market, how to approach due diligence in this part of the market, which institutions are more likely to sell a tail-end secondaries portfolio, whether...

The lack of human capital has become one of the biggest challenges in the secondaries industry – a situation that could change as the sector gains appeal among young professionals.

In this episode of Secondaries Investor's Second Thoughts podcast, we're joined by three young achievers who made it on the NextGen Leaders of Secondaries: Class of 2024 list, which features the most impressive secondaries professionals aged under 36. This year, we saw the highest number of submissions in the ranking’s history with almost 400 nominations.

Our guests include Sijia Cai, partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell; Sabrina Harliman, vice pres...

Second Thoughts host Madeleine Farman and America's correspondent Hannah Zhang sit down to discuss the latest volume, fundraising and performance data coming through on the secondaries market and talk through the spaces to watch as activity surges towards the end of the year.

Do you work collaboratively with potential partners to help shape a deal, or do you have a set notion of what type of transaction you want to be a part of from the outset? Is EQ as important to you as IQ? How big a role does ego play in preventing deals from being consummated?

In part two of our discussion with AlpInvest Partners managing director Louis Choy, PJT Partners‘ European head of private capital solutions Johanna Lottmann and law firm Stephenson Harwood partner and head of private funds Sarah de Ste Croix, we examine these questions and m...

A secondaries buyer, adviser and lawyer walk into a room. This isn't the start of a bad joke – it's the culmination of an idea Secondaries Investor had after moderating a panel at an alternatives conference with AlpInvest Partners managing director Louis Choy, PJT Partners' European head of private capital solutions Johanna Lottmann and law firm Stephenson Harwood partner and head of private funds Sarah de Ste Croix. Over drinks at a nearby pub, the idea was born to record a podcast providing a 360-degree view of the latest trends in the market, as seen by representatives of the three mai...

While many private markets firms are working to leverage generative AI, secondaries investment firm Clipway has put the technology front and centre of its strategy.

The London-headquartered firm counts secondaries veterans Ingmar Vallano, Vincent Gombault and Benoît Verbrugghe and others among its senior investment team. All worked at secondaries giant Ardian.

Since its inception last year, Clipway says it has reviewed close to $54 billion of potential opportunities and has built up an exposure to close to 150 GPs, which is a combination of the firm’s primary and secondaries activities. It says its generative artificial int...

This episode first aired on September 5, 2024

The top 50 secondaries investors globally raised $473.8 billion in the five years to the end of 2023, according to this year’s SI 50. That’s a 9 percent increase on last year’s ranking, when $434.5 billion was recorded across a longer counting period of five-and-a-half years.

Ardian took the top spot, raising $49.6 billion across the period, followed closely by Blackstone Strategic Partners, which raked in $49.5 billion. Lexington Partners, which holds the record for the largest secondaries fund ever raised, accumulated $36.7 billion in commitments, coming in at number three.

Specialisation is driving mu...

This episode first aired on September 23, 2024 and is sponsored by Kirkland & Ellis, LGT Capital Partners and TPG NewQuest

The Asia-Pacific secondaries market is one of the most fascinating corners of the global secondaries landscape. This region typically never accounts for more than single-digit figures in terms of global deal volume share – yet some of the most innovative transactions have come out of the APAC market over the years.

In this episode of our Decade of Secondaries Investing miniseries, we sit down with Brooke Zhou, partner at LGT Capital Partners; Michelle Cheh, partner at Kirkland & Ellis; and D...

This episode originally aired on July 8, 2024 and is sponsored by UBS Asset Management and Proskauer Rose

The global secondaries market has grown from roughly $47 billion in 2014 to more than $100 billion today. In Europe, fragmentation has led to some significant regional differences. However, it is also clear that many of the trends and dynamics found in the European market are the same as in North America – indeed, some of these developments occurred there first.

In the penultimate episode of the Decade of Secondaries Investing podcast miniseries, we sit down with Jochen Mende, an executive director responsible fo...

This episode first aired on June 3, 2024

The private equity industry has been pushing for more gender equality among GPs, LPs and intermediaries over the past decade, and the trend is now taking hold in the secondaries market, where diversity issues have historically received less attention.

In recent years, women across secondaries have been advocating for empowerment movements and forming support groups, including the Women in Secondaries network launched by Coller Capital and Akin Gump in 2020, as well as the WINS initiative backed in 2021 by five industry professionals representing the buyside, advisory, lending and legal sectors.

Fo...

This episode first aired on May 29, 2024

Specialised secondaries strategies are becoming an increasingly important part of the market. According to data complied by Secondaries Investor, 85 percent of the capital raised by secondaries funds in final closes last year was for private equity strategies; the remainder of this was for non-PE strategies, and the year before that more than one-third of capital raised was for non-PE strategies.

There is also increasing specialisation within private equity secondaries, as firms including Lexington Partners, Strategic Partners, AlpInvest Partners and LGT Capital Partners carve out teams to focus on single-asset con...

This episode first aired on May 22, 2024

Post-global financial crisis, many institutional investors were forced sellers, offloading private markets exposure at hefty discounts. More than a decade on, these same institutional investors have become repeat sellers on the secondaries market, using the tool as a way to proactively manage their portfolios. How has LP sentiment toward the secondaries market changed, and what is the outlook for this mainstay of the sub-sector?

In this sixth episode of the Decade of Secondaries Investing miniseries, Secondaries Investor senior reporter Madeleine Farman sits down with Jeffrey Keay, managing director at Har...

This episode first aired on May 13, 2024

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently passed rules relating to the GP-led secondaries market have put these deals squarely on LPs’ radars.

“[These rules] raise the visibility of GP-led transactions to LPs and they signal how important and risky those transactions might be,” Igor Rozenblit – managing partner and founder of governance, risk and regulatory services provider Iron Road Partners and the former private equity expert in the Division of Enforcement of the SEC – told Secondaries Investor.

“I wouldn't be surprised for LPs who have already focused on thes...

This episode first aired on May 7, 2024 and is sponsored by Ares Management, Dawson Partners and Proskauer Rose

The North American secondaries market remains the deepest and most active area for secondaries trading of all the global regions. Around $114 billion-worth of alternatives exposure changed hands last year and North America accounted for around two-thirds of global secondaries trading.

In this fourth episode of the Decade of Secondaries Investing miniseries, we sit down with Eddie Keith, a partner and head of infrastructure secondaries in the Ares Secondaries Group; Chris Robinson, partner in the private funds group at Pro...

This episode first aired on April 29, 2024

Single-asset continuation funds have surged in popularity in recent years. While the technology isn't new, it took persistence from secondaries market advisers to show both private equity managers and buyers that vehicles associated with the moniker 'zombie funds' could be used to keep hold of star-performing assets.

Last year, single-asset continuation fund vehicles took out the largest share of GP-led transactions, accounting for around 39 percent of the $48 billion of volume seen in this part of the market, according to a year-end report from Lazard.

There was "some...

This episode first aired on April 22, 2024

What's in a name? The process of moving an asset or assets from an existing private markets fund into a separate structure has been happening for some time now – some say as early as 2006 and possibly even prior to that.

The so-called 'continuation fund' market was worth around $40 billion last year, according to advisory estimates. Yet, this market was not always seen as a positive and constructive tool with which fund sponsors could deliver liquidity, via an option, while retaining their hold over prized assets.

In the se...

This episode originally aired on April 15, 2024

A decade ago, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, anxiety around unknowns was still rippling through financial markets, including within secondaries. Similarly, there was a great deal of concern around the Volcker Rule that came into effect in 2014, which essentially prohibited banks from investing in private equity with their own funds.

In 2013, secondaries volume sat at around $28 billion. The following year, volume leapt to $42 billion. While regulation should not be overplayed, the Volcker Rule and Solvency II – a regulation affecting insurance companies and the percentage of risky as...

This episode originally aired on March 26, 2024

In this episode, Secondaries Investor's Madeleine Farman, Adam Le and Hannah Zhang cut through the headline figures in 2023's advisory reports to break down geographic trends and key themes in the market.

Total deal volume sat somewhere in the region of $109 billion to $115 billion in 2023 with LP-led volume making up $56 billion to $66 billion.

Farman, Le and Zhang delve into topics including APAC secondaries market activity, structured liquidity offerings such as NAV loans, preferred equity and GP commit financing, and the popularity of multi-asset continuation funds as managers s...