The Growing Popularity of Continuation Funds

May 21, 2024 | Hayley McCollum, Research Analyst

Historically, the private equity secondary market has been used by limited partners (“LPs”) to sell exposures at the end of their lives and as such contained only tail-end exposures. Selling these lingering exposures to private equity funds allowed LPs to clean up their balance sheets and fueled the growth of secondary private equity funds within the broader private equity space. As the market evolved, however, higher-quality assets began transacting as investors started to use secondary markets as a useful portfolio management tool. More recently, general partners (“GPs”) have come to occupy an increasing percentage of the overall market. In 2023, about $110 billion in volume traded in private equity secondaries, with about 50% of the total transaction activity represented by GP-led transactions.

In this newsletter, we provide an overview of continuation funds, including their growth, structure, transaction requirements, and considerations for investors.

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