The private assets secondary market could reach $250 billion this year after surging to a record $121 billion in the first half of 2026, Nigel Dawn, global head of the private capital advisory group at Evercore Inc., said in a Bloomberg TV interview.
Dawn attributed the growth to a structural shift in how the world’s largest limited partners are using secondary markets to generate liquidity at a time when private equity portfolios are failing to produce expected distributions.
“The secondary market is core market infrastructure right now,” Dawn said.
General partner-led transactions, particularly single-asset continuation vehicles, have overtaken limited partner-led deals as the dominant force in the market. GPs are using them to retain trophy assets they believe have further growth potential.
Dawn said the secondary market currently represents only about 2% of global private assets under management, leaving substantial room for expansion. He said Evercore expects an additional $150 billion in secondary market capital to be raised in the second half of this year alone.
“Our sense is there is enough capital available,” he said, adding that if anything the binding constraint on further growth is capital formation rather than asset availability.
As for software-specific continuation deals, which have declined sharply, Dawn said the market is recovering but has become significantly more selective, with investors favoring vertical software models they view as durable and where AI is seen as an enabler rather than a disruptor. Horizontal software models, by contrast, face deeper scrutiny given the potential for AI-driven disruption to their pricing and business models.
“The market is coming back,” Dawn said. “Investors have had time to analyze which business models are reliable to be durable and which are likely to be challenged.”
Pricing in the broader buyout secondary market has largely normalized, with 90% of the most recent valuations serving as the effective transaction price, Dawn said. That’s a signal, he said, that the market has returned to equilibrium between buyer appetite and seller expectations.
Written by: Tim Leemaster and Romaine Bostick @Bloomberg
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