October 27, 2025
Private equity still has a distribution problem, and secondaries have become one of the clearest ways around it. Traditional exits have been slow, IPO windows have been uneven, and sponsors still need to return cash to limited partners. That has pushed more activity into transactions that sell fund interests, extend ownership periods, or move assets into new vehicles instead of forcing a full sale.
The market is now on pace to pass $200 billion, compared with less than one-third of that size in 2020. Nigel Dawn, Evercore's global head of private capital, sits near the center of that growth. His team has advised on roughly half of secondary transactions this year, covering both investor-led sales and manager-led deals.
The economics explain the attention. Secondary advisory fees can range from about 0.1% to 2% of transaction value. Dawn's group generated more than $350 million of revenue on roughly $75 billion of deals over the last year, equal to about 13% of Evercore's advisory fees. The team has grown to about 150 people across New York, Chicago, Singapore, Paris, London, and Dallas.
The main structure is the continuation vehicle. A sponsor sells one or more assets from an older fund into a new vehicle, giving some investors a cash exit while letting others roll forward. The sponsor keeps managing the asset, and the old fund can show distributions. Nearly 75% of the 50 largest private equity firms have used secondary transactions this year to return cash, and some are even using continuation vehicles for continuation vehicles.
The criticism is fair. These deals can look like financial engineering, and the sponsor is often effectively on both sides of the transaction. Valuation, process, investor consent, and transparency matter because the conflict risk is obvious.
Competition is rising. Jefferies handled more than $31 billion of secondary transactions in the first half of 2025, and Macquarie, Campbell Lutyens, and Houlihan Lokey are building their own platforms. For recruiting, the point is that advisory growth is not limited to classic M&A. Private capital advisory has become a real fee pool because investors want liquidity and sponsors want more time.