New Tools: Secondaries & Continuation Vehicles Go Mainstream

Section II: Opportunities for LPs · from The State of Private Equity, Part 2B: Challenges and Opportunities for LPs.

Secondaries have evolved from a niche workaround into structural market infrastructure. In 2025, GP-led continuation vehicle (CV) transaction value grew 62% YoY, a 37% CAGR since 2022. CVs now account for less than 10% of total PE exit value.¹⁸ More than half of GPs cite the need to return capital to existing LPs as the primary driver behind their most recent CV.¹⁸

Chart in the full report — source: Bain¹⁸

That translates directly into liquidity options for LPs. Secondaries transaction value across GP- and LP-led vehicles grew 41% YoY in 2025.¹⁸ In terms of total sponsor-backed exit volume, GP-led secondaries have grown from 6% in 2020 to a projected 16% by 2026.¹⁹

LPs remain selective about how much of this liquidity mechanism they'll tolerate from any one GP, but as a category, secondaries are now a permanent fixture of the liquidity toolkit rather than an emergency valve.¹⁸ The governance concerns some LPs raise about GP-led continuation vehicles specifically, which we discussed in Section I, do not appear to have slowed that growth.

Chart in the full report — source: Bain²⁰

Pricing data reinforces that shift from workaround to infrastructure. According to UBP, LP-led secondary pricing for buyout funds has held in the low-to-mid 90s as a percentage of NAV through H1 2025, significantly higher than credit, real estate, or venture secondaries, which indicates that sellers are no longer forced into deep discounts to generate liquidity.²¹

Chart in the full report — source: UBP²¹