Secondaries Investor’s Second Thoughts

The secondaries market is gearing up for a record-breaking year in 2025, with North America leading in dealmaking. Europe presents exciting opportunities for portfolio diversification, while Asia-Pacific is seeing a rise in GP-led deals. The potential impact of Donald Trump’s presidency looms over North American dealings, creating a mix of optimism and caution. Evergreen funds are changing the game, prompting investors to adapt their strategies as they navigate the complex landscape ahead.

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 and developments over the course of 2024 and what the next 12 months could bring for the secondaries market.

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 new entrants will enter into this space, and the long-term outlook for this growing segment of the secondaries market.

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 president at TPG; and Josef Menasche, co-head of secondaries advisory at Goldman Sachs. They discuss current talent trends and how they think the secondaries market will evolve in the future.

Hannah Zhang, North America correspondent for Secondaries Investor, shares her expertise on the surging secondaries market. The conversation highlights a record-breaking $5.6 billion raised in the first three quarters of 2024 and the impact of GP-led vehicles and major billion-dollar deals. Zhang also delves into the evolving landscape of private markets and the performance dynamics of continuation funds, emphasizing the trend towards liquidity and rapid returns. Emerging trends reveal growing interest from traditional players and high-net-worth investors.

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 more. Find out what separates GP-leds 1.0 from 2.0, how the market got to this point, and listen until the end to hear a few light-hearted anecdotes from participants. If you missed part one of the discussion, listen here.

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 main constituent groups. In Part 1 of our group discussion, hosted by senior editor Adam Le, the trio share their thoughts on the legal, financial and commercial benefits of leading a deal. They discuss the ways secondaries participants are coming up with creative ways to name deal leads in transaction documents; why syndicate capital is just as important as lead buyer capital; and how this definition may evolve. To hear more of our episodes, head to secondariesinvestor.com/podcast or you can search and subscribe to the new Secondaries Investor's Second Thoughts dedicated channel wherever you like to listen.

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 intelligence and machine learning system TESS allows the firm to conduct analysis of portfolios of underlying companies' data. In this episode, senior reporter Madeleine Farman sits down with managing partner Ingmar Vallano to discuss the benefits Clipway sees in putting generative AI at the heart of its process, the opportunities it sees for investments and the benefits generative AI could bring to private markets. To hear more of our episodes, head to secondariesinvestor.com/podcast or you can search and subscribe to Secondaries Investor's Second Thoughts wherever you like to listen.

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 much of this underlying growth – whether that be through asset class expansion, strategies focused down on LP-leds or GP-led deals, or picking a focus on a market segment with less secondary competition. Evergreen vehicles are also spurring on new avenues for secondaries capital raising. In this episode of Second Thoughts, senior reporter Madeleine Farman and Americas correspondent Hannah Zhang discuss how far these factors have driven growth in the SI 50 and how much room there is to grow further. See the full SI 50 ranking here

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 Darren Massara, managing partner at TPG NewQuest, to discuss what types of deals have happened over the last 10 years in the Asia-Pacific region. We explore Renminbi-to-US dollar restructurings and why these have taken a back seat in 2024; why valuations are a more complex issue when it comes to Asia-Pacific GPs than their global counterparts; the different drivers of dealflow in the various markets in APAC and what types of opportunities these are bringing about; and why the regulations affecting GP-led secondaries deals in the US and western Europe have had little impact on APAC secondaries transactions. For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.