The European secondaries market saw a string of sizeable deals across the course of 2025, with expected growth continued both this year and beyond.

European managers CapVest, Montagu, Norvestor and PAI Partners secured CV-on-CV transactions over the course of last year, with CVC, Inflexion and TDR Capital also securing sizeable CVs, to name just a few. Belgian holding company Groupe Bruxelles Lambert and APG Asset Management also scored large LP-led portfolio deals.

In this episode, editor Madeleine Farman is joined by Gabriel Möllerberg, managing director at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Lea Lazaric Calvert, a senior managing director at Evercore, and Nik Morandi, senior managing director at Blackstone Strategic Partners.

The group discuss the rise of CV-on-CV transactions in Europe, the nuances around creating alignment given the prevalence of full fund carry waterfalls, the rise of first time sellers in the European secondaries market and expectations for European secondaries activity in 2026.

This episode is sponsored by Lexington Partners, LGT Capital Partners and Davis Polk

In 2024, GP-led deals hit a record of $71 billion in transaction volume, accounting for 44 percent of the total secondaries market volume of $160 billion, according to Evercore’s FY 2024 Secondary Market Review. This is significant and marks the increasing popularity of continuation vehicles as an exit route.

In this episode, Secondaries Investor senior editor Adam Le is joined by Lexington Partners’ Jeffrey Bloom, LGT Capital Partners’ Brooke Zhou and Davis Polk’s Leor Landa.

The trio explore how GP-led transactions have rapidly grown into a mainstream liquidity and portfolio-management tool, against a backdrop of constrained exit markets, rising LP demand for liquidity and increasing GP comfort with continuation vehicles.

They also examine market dynamics across deal sizes, noting the challenges of scaling mega single-asset vehicles and the significant untapped opportunity in the mid-market, where many GPs are still early in their GP-led journeys.

Brooke Zhou is a partner at LGT Capital Partners in Hong Kong, an investment committee member, and is responsible for origination, due diligence, execution and monitoring of Asian primary and secondary investments

Jeffrey Bloom is a partner on the secondaries team at Lexington Partners focused on the origination, evaluation and execution of continuation vehicle transactions

Leor Landa is a partner and head of investment management at Davis Polk

Adam Le is senior editor, EMEA, Private Equity Group, at PEI Group

GP stake secondaries transactions are steadily gaining traction as investors seek exposure to leading private equity firms. Though still in their early stages, these deals are often described as offering some of the most attractive risk-return profiles in today’s volatile market.

In this episode, Jon Costello, founder of Devon Park Advisors, and Christopher Zook, founder and chief investment officer of CAZ Investments, join Americas correspondent Hannah Zhang in a discussion on the forces driving the rise of GP stake secondaries.

With approximately $10 billion in assets, CAZ Investments has committed a large portion of its capital – about $5 billion – to GP stakes opportunities, Secondaries Investor reported in June. The firm deployed $700 million in GP stake secondaries alone in 2024, including a single transaction valued at over $500 million.

Costello, who is tracking the GP stakes market closely, said GP stakes secondaries have the potential to achieve the same growth curve as has recently been seen in private credit secondaries if the market is able to pair the right structures with the right cost of capital.

Zook added: "Wall Street folks are really smart, and they're going to figure out a way to dice and slice cashflows and all kinds of creative ways to be able to satisfy different demands that investors have. GP Stakes will be nothing different. It's already happening a little bit. I think it's just going to accelerate."