Secondaries Investor’s Second Thoughts

How Next Gen Leaders see the future 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.

Secondaries market on track to break records

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.

What are the ingredients for a successful secondaries deal?

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.

The 'lead investor' conundrum: a buyer, adviser and lawyer share their thoughts

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.

Saving time, energy and brainpower: Clipway’s Vallano on AI-driven secondaries

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.

How to get into the SI 50: Inside our latest ranking of the biggest secondaries fundraisers

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

SI Decade: is Asia-Pacific the most promising secondaries market?

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.

SI Decade: Europe’s appeal and the evolution of specialisation

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.