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.

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 for secondaries transactions at UBS Asset Management, and Bruno Bertrand-Delfau, partner and co-head of secondaries transactions and liquidity solutions at Proskauer Rose.

The pair discuss how the European secondaries market has developed over the past decade, how it compares with the North American market and what’s in store for GP-led and LP-led transactions globally.

For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.

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.

For those who have made it to senior roles, the priority is to retain, promote and elevate other women. In this eighth episode of the Decade of Secondaries Investing miniseries, Americas correspondent Hannah Zhang sits down with two women pioneers to discuss how the secondaries industry can promote gender equality. They are Francesca Paveri, senior managing director at investment bank Evercore, and Tori Buffery, senior director of secondaries at Nicola Wealth and senior adviser at Morningside Capital.

For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.

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 continuation funds.

In episode seven of the Decade of Secondaries Investing miniseries, senior editor Adam Le sits down with Jeremy Coller, chief investment officer and managing partner at Coller Capital, and Yann Robard, managing partner at Dawson Partners, to discuss how far the asset class has come in terms of specialisation and cross-asset-class appeal.

• For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.
• Listen: "Everything you wanted to know about preferred equity"

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 HarbourVest Partners, and Adrian Millan, partner at PJT Park Hill. Keay and Millan take a deep dive into LP portfolio management and look at how institutional investors are using secondaries as a tool to manage private markets exposure.

We look into the evolution of programmatic secondaries sales and explore the drivers and dynamics behind why some institutional investors are repeat sellers of private markets exposure.

• For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here
• Read: "Liquidity the primary use case for GPs looking to enter secondaries processes – PJT"
• Read: "Evercore: distressed sellers 1% of 2013 market volume"