Secondaries fund managers are in an arms race. For the last few years, Ardian and Lexington Partners have been vying for the top spot, raising successively record-breaking vehicles to snatch up every pre-owned PE fund stake in sight. However, they’re not the only ones amassing hefty arsenals. Nine of the ten largest firms in the market at the beginning of 2019 had raised the targets on their latest flagship funds by an average of 75%, PEI data show, in a case of “go big or go home”.

Proactive communication, transparency, and fair timelines are essential to preserving investor relationships

GP-led secondaries hit a record $22bn in 2018, a 38% increase on the previous 12 months and triple the levels seen a year earlier. The momentum has continued into 2019 with H1-2019 doubling the figures from H1-2018.

Few talk about the denominator effect these days, but they soon will. For those with short memories, the phenomenon refers to the relative weighting to private equity (the numerator) in an investor’s portfolio growing by virtue of a fall in the public markets (the denominator). This skews target allocations, forcing LPs to rebalance their portfolios by selling fund positions in the secondary market.

Secondary Pricing report H1 2019

It’s time to adopt the brace position. Tough times are on the way. There are few who doubt we are now teetering on the brink of an economic downturn after one of the longest bull-runs in history. 

Just under two-thirds of LPs in Preqin’s H1 2019 Alternative Asset Investor Outlook think we have reached the peak of the market.

Family offices continue to be a hot topic these days. According to FINTRX, a Boston-based family office data and research platform, there are now 2,350 family offices globally, with over $50 million in AUM. That is an increase of 23% over the previous year when the same report showed 1,910 family offices with over $50 million in AUM.

As family offices continue to grow in size and volume, so have their commitments to private equity, and no exception has been their evolving and growing appetite for secondaries - a trend which has grown much faster than most might realize.

Secondary portfolios are trending towards majority or single buyer sales, but sellers may be missing out on optimizing pricing

Billion dollar transactions are becoming more commonplace in the secondary market, with sellers shopping around record-breaking portfolios as of late. Secondary funds are raising record amounts of capital, just note the surge of mega-funds in the sector, that will need to be deployed in the years to come. With the secondary market continuing to grow, there will surely be increased appetite to pick-up large portfolios being shopped around by mainstays in the advising industry such as Greenhill, or Campbell Lutyens. In cases where the sale is prompted by distress or regulation, selling lines in bulk can be a necessary outcome. However, when these pressures aren’t present are sellers maximizing value via large portfolio sales? Is the whole always greater than the sum of the parts?

According to market estimates, before the global financial crisis, 92 percent of private equity fund secondary sales by value involved buyout investment vehicles exclusively. Some 96 percent of funds changing hands focused on North America and Europe. However, since then - moving in lock-step with a private equity space that’s become more diverse by both strategy and geography - the market share of buyout vehicles and North American and European funds has declined. As annual secondary market volume soars to new heights, buyout funds are likely to continue accounting for the lion’s share of transactions, but the market share of more specialized strategies should grow further, as investors seek higher returns in less crowded areas. A record $70 billion to $80 billion worth of funds were sold on the secondary market last year, up nearly four-fold from the $18 billion sold in 2008 (then an all-time high) and market participants forecast a new record this year of $90 billion to $100 billion.

Speculation continues to mount as to whether we are amidst a VC bubble. Certainly, we are not the first to say this and, in some ways, we might stop asking if we are witnessing a VC bubble but rather when this bubble will pop and to what end this may lead to a jump in VC secondary transactions.