Secondaries Investor’s Second Thoughts

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 rankings, as well as recent market data sets, to understand what investors and fund managers are thinking, where capital is moving and how private markets are evolving. Read the full coverage of the Secondaries Investor Global Market Survey 2026 here. Download a data pack of the findings discussed in the podcast episode here.

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, compared with just 7 percent of the $114 billion of volume in 2023, according to Evercore's year-end report. Alongside these developments, secondaries manager M&A continues. This year alone, EQT has agreed to buy Coller Capital for up to $3.7 billion, while KKR agreed to buy sports investing specialist Arctos Partners with plans for a secondaries build out as part of its vision for the future of the combined firms. Evergreen capital has also emerged as a secondaries market mainstay, according to Evercore's report. Permanent capital funds have raised $46 billion for secondaries to-date with near-term fundraising coming in at $25 billion. A quarter of secondaries buyers have an evergreen fund, with this proportion set to rise in future. In this episode, Nigel Dawn, global head of Evercore's private capital advisory group, discusses the capitalisation of the secondaries market over the longer term, and how this will change the way Evercore works with the buyside. He also dives into how secondaries market activity will take shape in 2026 at a time where private markets activity is expected to ramp up.

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 into a mainstream liquidity and portfolio-management tool, against a backdrop of constrained exit markets, rising LP demand for liquidity and increasing GP comfort with continuation vehicles. They also examine market dynamics across deal sizes, noting the challenges of scaling mega single-asset vehicles and the significant untapped opportunity in the mid-market, where many GPs are still early in their GP-led journeys. Brooke Zhou is a partner at LGT Capital Partners in Hong Kong, an investment committee member, and is responsible for origination, due diligence, execution and monitoring of Asian primary and secondary investments Jeffrey Bloom is a partner on the secondaries team at Lexington Partners focused on the origination, evaluation and execution of continuation vehicle transactions Leor Landa is a partner and head of investment management at Davis Polk Adam Le is senior editor, EMEA, Private Equity Group, at PEI Group

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 of whose organisations run evergreen vehicles deploying into the secondaries market. Proskauer’s head of its registered fund group John Mahon also joins the conversation. In the wide-ranging conversation, Mahon, Borton and Robinson discuss appropriate ways to structure these vehicles, where to invest evergreen capital, regulatory updates, the long-term trajectory for these vehicles, and how they may impact the secondaries market.

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 tend to push more sellers into the secondary market... And so, in a funny way, it's not that we're uncorrelated to the world – we are – but on the other side of things, all of those things that keep us up at night that we're talking about actually create more opportunity for a buyer in the secondaries market." While market participants continued to put their heads down and get deals done that were far along when the tariff announcements occurred, secondaries professionals are still working to digest second- and third-order impacts, Galen Lewis, a partner in Proskauer's private funds group, explained. "Normally, distress of some sort is something that creates additional volume in the secondaries market." In this far-reaching discussion, Granoff and Lewis discuss a variety of issues affecting the LP-led market and the drivers of underlying deal volume, including the regulatory developments that may spur or hinder LP-led portfolio sales in the coming year, the rise of '40 Act capital, as well as new entrants.

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 secondaries advisory at Campbell Lutyens, speak with Americas Correspondent Hannah Zhang about the evolution of the private credit secondaries market and where the next opportunities may emerge. "Most of the asset managers are sitting on tens of billions of NAV. So it lends itself to a secondary opportunity that is inevitably going to continue to grow and be of scale," Cooper said in the podcast. "I think as we look five to 10 years down the road, we are hopeful that we are going to see more specialised pockets of capital come into the space."

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 Eneasz Kądziela, deputy chief investment officer and head of private equity. In this episode, Secondaries Investor editor Madeleine Farman, senior editor Adam Le and Americas correspondent Hannah Zhang discuss their top secondaries takeaways from NEXUS, particularly the top concerns for LPs on both the sell-side and the buy-side of the secondaries market.

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 to kickstart the year, appetite from private markets firms to launch secondaries strategies, how to approach career growth through mid-level and senior-level ranks, and much more.

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 its alternatives portfolio becomes more mature, and his views on pricing and discounts in the market. Le and Webb also discuss Aware Super’s views for further international expansion and whether the team has been making any private markets asset allocation shifts over time where opportunities arise.

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 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.

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.

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.