Introduction
Most investment banking groups sell companies, raise money for companies, or advise companies. Private capital advisory (PCA) works one level up: its deals are about funds. A pension selling stakes in thirty buyout funds, a sponsor moving its best company out of an expiring fund into a new vehicle it still manages, a manager raising its next flagship: these are PCA mandates, and they have become some of the busiest in the industry.
Today we are launching our Private Capital Advisory Guide: 80 articles across 9 sections on secondaries, continuation vehicles, fund placement, GP stakes, and fund finance, plus the careers and interview side of the seat. It is also our first guide launched with all three layers of the site from day one: the free long-form guide, 140 practice questions in the technical bank, and a Premium interview-ready version that condenses the whole area into 15 focused reads. This post explains what PCA is, why it has moved to the center of private markets, what the guide covers, and how to use it for the seat you are targeting.
What Private Capital Advisory Actually Is
Candidates often meet PCA as a line on a bank's careers page with little explanation. The clearest way in is to ask two questions of any deal: what asset changes hands, and who hires the bank.
- Private Capital Advisory
The investment banking business that advises fund managers (general partners, or GPs) and fund investors (limited partners, or LPs) on transactions at the level of the fund or the manager rather than the operating company. Its main products are LP-led and GP-led secondaries, primary fund placement, GP stakes sales, and fund finance advice.
A Bank Product Built Around Funds, Not Companies
In M&A, the thing being sold is a company, and its price is an enterprise value. In PCA, the thing being sold is usually a stake in a fund, a portfolio of companies held through a partnership, and its price is quoted as a percentage of the fund's net asset value (NAV), the value the GP itself reports each quarter.
That one change reshapes the job. The buyers are financial investors, almost never strategics. The key document is the fund's limited partnership agreement rather than a share purchase agreement. And the questions an interviewer asks move from synergies and accretion to fund economics: fees, carry, distributions, and how a fund's track record is measured.
Five Mandates, Two Kinds of Client
PCA sorts into five recurring mandates, and the client differs across them. Some deals are run for the investors in a fund, others for the manager of a fund:
| Mandate | What changes hands | Who hires the bank |
|---|---|---|
| LP-led secondary | Existing fund interests | A selling LP |
| GP-led secondary | Fund assets moving to a new vehicle | The GP |
| Primary fundraising | New commitments to a fund | The GP |
| GP stakes | A minority stake in the manager | The manager's owners |
| Fund finance | Borrowing against the fund | The GP, for the fund |
The table is the first thing to internalize, because a frequent interview slip is to treat PCA as one product. A banker selling a pension's fund interests in March can be advising the GP of one of those same funds on a continuation vehicle by June, and the conflicts, fees, and pricing logic change with the role. The guide's opening article on what private capital advisory bankers do walks through each mandate in turn.
Why Secondaries Became a Core Banking Business
For a long time, selling a fund interest early was a last resort, something an investor did when it had to. That is no longer the case, and the shift explains why banks now compete hard for this advisory business.
From Last Resort to Portfolio Tool
Secondary volume passed $200 billion for the first time in 2025 on every major count: Evercore put the year at more than $226 billion, a gain of more than 40% on 2024, Lazard at $233 billion, and Jefferies at $240 billion. The first half of 2026 then set a new first-half record, at about $121 billion in Evercore's mid-year secondary market review and $118 billion in Jefferies' July review.
Part of the push is cyclical. Exits have been slow, so funds return less cash than LPs planned for, and those LPs need distributions to fund new commitments. Part is structural: selling a stake in an older fund has become a routine way to convert paper value into cash and rebalance a portfolio, and the buyers on the other side are a large, well-funded group of dedicated secondaries funds and evergreen vehicles.
The Continuation Vehicle Moment
The biggest growth has come from the GP-led secondary, led by the continuation vehicle. Evercore counted $65 billion of GP-led volume in the first half of 2026, up 35%, with single-asset continuation vehicles alone at $34 billion, up 88% and now the largest deal type. In Evercore's data, most single-asset volume priced at NAV and a further 14% above it, yet buyers still underwrite to higher returns on these deals (target multiples around 2.3x, against about 1.7x for diversified LP portfolios) because each one is a concentrated bet on a single company.
- Continuation Vehicle
A new fund, run by the same GP, that buys one or more companies from one of the GP's older funds. Existing LPs choose whether to take cash or roll their stake into the new vehicle, and new investors led by a secondary buyer fund the cash. It lets a sponsor keep owning its best assets past the original fund's term.
For candidates, this is where PCA touches every other sponsor-facing seat. When a sponsor decides whether to sell a company, take it public, or keep it through a continuation vehicle, the CV is now a real alternative to M&A, and the continuation vehicles explainer on this blog is a good primer before the guide's GP-led section.
Banks Are Buying the Capability
The clearest sign of how much this matters to the industry is what banks are paying for it. In April 2026 Lazard agreed to acquire Campbell Lutyens, a specialist in fund placement and secondary advice, for $460 million at closing plus deferred and earn-out consideration, and said in its announcement filed with the SEC that private capital advisory would become its third business line, alongside financial advisory and asset management. The guide's landscape section profiles the leading franchises and how they were built.
What the Guide Covers
The guide is organized the way the work is organized: the economics first, then each product, then the buyers and the market, then the career. Each section answers a question candidates are actually asked.
| Section | Articles | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| The PCA Landscape | 8 | What does PCA do, and for whom? |
| Fund Economics | 10 | How do fees, carry, and NAV work? |
| LP-Led Secondaries | 9 | How is a fund interest priced and sold? |
| GP-Led Secondaries | 13 | How does a continuation vehicle work? |
| Primary Fundraising | 7 | How does a fund get raised? |
| GP Stakes and Fund Finance | 8 | What else can a manager sell or borrow? |
| Buyers and Underwriting | 8 | Who buys, and how do they price? |
| Market Intelligence | 7 | Where is the market now? |
| Careers and Interviewing | 10 | How do you get the seat? |
The Economics Under Every Deal
The fund economics section is the foundation, and the one not to skip even with a PCA interview tomorrow. It covers the partnership agreement, the fund lifecycle, management fees and carried interest, European and American waterfalls, how NAV is set, and the metrics LPs use to judge a manager, from DPI and TVPI to IRR and public market equivalents. If the basic GP and LP fund structure is new to you, start there before the guide.
The Two Halves of Secondaries
The LP-led section follows a portfolio sale from start to finish: who sells and why, how a buyer turns NAV into a bid, how mosaic bids split a portfolio, how deferred payments work, and what it takes to transfer an interest once a price is agreed. The GP-led section, the largest in the guide, covers continuation vehicles from first conversations to closing: the process, lead investors and syndication, LP elections, the economics of carry and fees, conflicts and fairness opinions, and the landmark deals interviewers like to ask about.
Fundraising, GP Stakes, and Fund Finance
Three shorter sections cover the rest of the toolkit. Primary fundraising explains what placement agents do and how a fund moves from pre-marketing to final close. GP stakes explains why a successful manager sells a minority piece of itself and how that piece is valued, while fund finance covers subscription lines, NAV loans, and preferred equity, the borrowing that increasingly sits next to secondaries as a liquidity option.
Buyers, the Market, and the Career
The buyers section switches seats and looks at the deal from the secondary fund's side: who the buyers are, how they underwrite, how leverage lets them pay more, and why secondaries funds show a shallower J-curve than buyout funds. Market intelligence gives the latest data and how to quote it, and careers and interviewing covers recruiting, the interview format, compensation, exits, and full walkthroughs of the two classic PCA technical questions.
The Math That Shows Up in PCA Interviews
PCA interviews still test numbers, but rarely the ones a generalist prepares. Expect fund-level arithmetic you can do in your head, and expect to be asked what the number means rather than only what it is.
What a Bid at 90% of NAV Really Means
The most basic PCA calculation is also the easiest to misread, and the number is realistic: in Evercore's mid-year review, buyout fund interests were clearing at around 90% of NAV. A buyer that bids 90% of NAV on a fund interest with $100 million of NAV pays $90 million, a 10% discount. But if the fund still has $20 million of uncalled commitments, the buyer takes those on too, so its total capital at risk is $110 million, not $90 million.
- Discount to NAV
The gap between the price a secondary buyer pays for a fund interest and the NAV the fund's GP last reported, expressed as a percentage. A bid at 90% of NAV is a 10% discount. Because NAV is the GP's own estimate, the discount reflects the buyer's view of those marks, the time until cash comes back, and the return it needs, not a guaranteed gain.
The discount is not the buyer's return either. A purchase at 90% only makes money if the companies eventually return more cash than the price paid, and the timing matters as much as the amount. The guide's article on pricing LP interests and what drives the discount works through those cash flows step by step.
The Questions Built on Fund Economics
The second family of numbers comes from fund economics: how much carry a GP earns on a sale to a continuation vehicle, how a 20% LTV covenant on a NAV loan can be breached without a missed payment, or why two funds with the same TVPI can be very different investments. None of these needs a spreadsheet, but each needs you to know which number sits where in the fund's structure.
The example also shows why these questions reward structure over speed. The arithmetic is one line, but a good answer places it in the deal: who pays the carry, why the old fund's LPs care about the price, and what the buyer wants the GP to do with the money.
Fund-level questions are their own skill: Work through PCA, private equity, and valuation questions with worked answers, start practicing interview questions for free and see which concepts still need work before an interviewer finds them.
Three Ways to Use the Guide
The guide is built to be used at different depths, depending on how much time you have and whether PCA is your main target or one group among several.
The Free Long-Form Guide
All 80 articles are free to read, with no account needed. Read it in section order if PCA is your target, or dip into individual articles when a topic comes up in an interview for another group. A free five-question practice set with answers appears on every article so you can test yourself as you go, and articles that carry interview questions list them at the end, with the worked answers unlocked by Premium.
140 Practice Questions in the Technical Bank
The guide's 140 interview questions also sit in the practice platform's technical bank, alongside the core accounting, valuation, M&A, and LBO questions. There you can practice them in focused sessions, rate your own recall, and track which topics are still weak. The guide banks are part of Premium, and a free account includes a sample of the core bank.
The Interview-Ready Version
For the final stretch before an interview, the Premium interview-ready guide condenses the whole area into 15 reads, each taking roughly half an hour and each ending with a five-question quiz on what you just read. It is designed for the week before an interview, when re-reading 80 articles is not realistic.
Build the base
Read the landscape and fund economics sections of the long-form guide.
Learn the products
Work through the LP-led and GP-led sections, then the shorter product sections.
Test yourself
Practice the guide's questions in the technical bank and note the weak topics.
Close the gaps
Go back to the articles behind the questions you missed.
Get interview-ready
In the final week, read the interview-ready version and pass every quiz.
Who the Guide Is For
PCA has its own recruiting, but the guide is written for a wider audience than PCA candidates alone.
PCA and Secondaries Candidates
If you are interviewing for a PCA group, a placement agent, or a secondaries fund, this is the full curriculum. The seat also involves less company modeling than many candidates expect: a PCA analyst builds data books profiling each fund interest, pricing grids comparing bids fund by fund, and election trackers for continuation vehicles, all covered in the guide's map of what PCA analysts produce. The careers section covers the PCA interview format and recruiting, and it ends with full walkthroughs of the two classic PCA technical questions: walking through an LP portfolio sale and walking through a continuation vehicle.
Sponsors, M&A, and Buy-Side Candidates
Continuation vehicles now compete with sales and IPOs as exit routes, so candidates for a financial sponsors group, M&A, or private equity can expect questions on them too. The guide's comparison of PCA, sponsors coverage, and M&A shows where the three seats meet, and the fund economics section is useful for anyone recruiting into the buy side, where fees, carry, and the J-curve come up constantly.
Get the complete guide: Download our comprehensive 160-page PDF, covering the core technical questions and frameworks every banking interview builds on.
Key Takeaways
- PCA advises on funds, not companies: LP-led and GP-led secondaries, fund placement, GP stakes, and fund finance.
- Secondaries passed $200 billion in 2025 on every major survey, and the first half of 2026 set a new record.
- Continuation vehicles are the growth engine, with single-asset deals now the largest GP-led deal type.
- Prices are quoted against NAV, and a discount to NAV is neither the buyer's return nor a guaranteed gain.
- The guide has three layers: 80 free articles, 140 practice questions, and a 15-read interview-ready version.
Start With the Landscape
PCA rewards candidates who understand how funds work, and it punishes those who try to apply a pure M&A frame to a fund-level deal. The guide is built to close that gap in order: what the business is, how the money works, how each product runs, and how to talk about it in an interview.
If you only have time for one thing today, read the Private Capital Advisory Guide landscape section and the first fund economics articles. They cover the vocabulary every other section builds on, and they will already change how you answer the first question in a PCA interview.
