What private equity secondaries are

• LP-led secondaries. An investor sells one or more fund interests, usually to a dedicated secondary fund. The buyer takes over the remaining value and the unfunded commitment.
• GP-led secondaries. The manager moves one or more companies from an older fund into a new continuation vehicle it also manages. Existing LPs choose to sell for cash or roll their exposure.
• Single-asset and multi-asset deals. Continuation vehicles can hold one company or several, which changes how concentrated the rolled exposure is.

The secondaries market in numbers

Source: Jefferies Global Secondary Market Reviews (the full-year 2025 review and the July 2026 review of the first half). Other advisers report different totals: Evercore, for example, counts $226 billion for 2025.

Jefferies attributed the stable pricing in the first half of 2026 to demand for diversified, high-quality portfolios. Older funds trade at deeper discounts, and about one-third of LP-led deals now include deferred payments, which lets sellers defend a headline price.

How buyers price an LP interest

1. Set a reference date

   The price is quoted as a percentage of NAV at a past quarter end, usually the latest audited or reported one.

2. Read the data room

   Fund financial statements and schedules of investments, quarterly reports, capital account statements, and the LPA.

3. Re-underwrite the holdings

   Value each significant holding, model cash flows to exit, and apply the buyer’s target return.

4. Adjust for activity since the reference date

   Capital calls the buyer will fund and distributions the seller has already received change the cash at closing.

5. Account for the unfunded commitment

   The buyer takes over future calls, which lowers what it pays today.

6. Agree the structure

   Payment timing, deferrals, and the GP’s consent to the transfer.

Example: a buyer’s view of one LP interest

The family office from our look-through example considers selling its interest in Sample Fund III, worth $7.8 million at June 30, 2026. A buyer looks through to the holdings and forms a view on each one.

Holding-level view of the Fund III interest

Before its target return and the unfunded commitment, the buyer’s holding-level view comes to 90.9% of NAV. The two largest gaps are Company C, whose marks have fallen for three quarters (see our guide to Level 3 assets), and the software holdings the condensed schedule does not name. A seller who sees the same holdings can ask for the names, explain Company C’s plan, or keep the interest and sell another.

Illustrative example. All funds and companies are fictional, and the percentages are a simplified way to show how holding-level judgments add up. Real bids come from cash flow models.

What drives the price of an LP interest

• Strategy. Buyout and credit interests trade closer to NAV than venture or real estate.
• Fund age. Young funds price near NAV; tail-end funds at deep discounts.
• Concentration. A few holdings carrying most of the NAV make the price depend on those companies. See our guide to concentration risk.
• Unfunded commitments. The more the buyer has to fund later, the less it pays now.
• Information quality. Condensed schedules and stale marks widen the range of views, and buyers price uncertainty.

How LPs can prepare to sell

1. Look through every interest you might sell

   Holdings, marks, and movements over the last quarters, from each fund’s schedule of investments.

2. Find the discount drivers

   Concentrated positions, falling marks, unnamed holdings, and large unfunded commitments.

3. Choose what to sell

   Sometimes selling the interest the market prices best, and keeping the one it prices worst, gives a better result.

4. Prepare the data room

   Statements, schedules, and capital activity in one place, with each figure traceable.

5. Read the bid against your own view

   Compare the buyer’s price with your holding-level view, not only with NAV.

When your GP proposes a continuation vehicle

In a GP-led deal, existing LPs usually choose between selling for cash and rolling into the new vehicle, sometimes with an option to keep their current terms. The manager typically obtains a fairness opinion on the price.

• Look at the asset’s history. How its marks moved in the schedules of investments, quarter by quarter.
• Check your total exposure. If other funds of yours own the same company, rolling increases concentration.
• Compare the price with the latest mark. A price above the mark supports the valuation; a price below it raises questions about past marks.

How FundCount helps LPs in the secondaries market

FundCount AI Document Intelligence collects statements from your investor portals and email, converts them into accounting-ready data, and posts them to your books, with the source document one click from each posted figure. It now also extracts the schedule of investments from GP financial statements, so you can look through an interest before you sell it or decide on a continuation vehicle.

• Extracts asset-level data from GP financial statements: security name, industry, country, round or share class, shares, cost, and fair value.
• Tracks quarter-over-quarter movements in cost and fair value for each holding.
• Shows exposure by industry, country, and share class, filtered by year, quarter, fund, and holding company.
• Shows where the same security appears across different GPs.
• Keeps co-investments, valued from their own schedules of investments, next to fund holdings.

The extracted data sits in the same platform that runs FundCount’s portfolio accounting, partnership accounting, and reporting, used by family offices and by the fund administrators that report to LPs.

Watch-outs

• FundCount extracts what each GP discloses. Grouped lines in a condensed schedule stay grouped until the GP provides the names.
• Holdings data covers what each fund owns and what it is worth. Company KPIs such as revenue and EBITDA come from GP portfolio company updates.

FAQs

Sources and methodology