Introduction
For years the natural buyer of a stake in a direct lending fund was the wrong one. Evercore's private capital advisory (PCA) team, reviewing the credit secondaries market in August 2025, noted that before dedicated capital arrived the buyers of credit fund interests were mainly private equity secondaries funds, whose higher hurdles implied discounts on even high-quality loan portfolios that deterred limited partner (LP) and general partner (GP) sellers alike. A performing loan book cannot be bought to a buyout secondaries target without a price its owner will refuse.
The answer was a different counterparty: pools raised for one strategy, with a return target that matches what the assets earn and a team that can diligence them on their own terms. The same logic produced specialist buyers in infrastructure, venture and real estate, and they decide whether the non-buyout sleeve of a sale clears near its value or drags down the whole bid.
Who the Specialist Secondaries Buyers Are
Specialist capital comes from three kinds of firm:
- Strategy funds inside secondaries platforms, such as Blackstone Strategic Partners' infrastructure series or the credit, real estate and infrastructure funds of Ares' secondaries group, the former Landmark Partners.
- Multi-strategy allocators such as StepStone, which raises separate venture and infrastructure secondaries funds.
- Sector managers and pure specialists, such as CBRE Investment Management in real estate or Industry Ventures in venture, which Goldman Sachs agreed to buy in October 2025.
The secondaries buyer universe places them beside the diversified platforms; the table asks what each knows that a buyout-focused team does not.
| Segment | Example dedicated buyers and latest fund | What they underwrite that a generalist does not |
|---|---|---|
| Credit | Ares Credit Secondaries Fund, about $7.1 billion including affiliated vehicles and anticipated leverage (January 2026) | Every loan on the tape: borrower credit, covenants, cash versus accrued interest, recovery |
| Infrastructure | Blackstone Strategic Partners Infrastructure IV, $5.5 billion (September 2025); StepStone Secondaries Infrastructure Fund, $1.7 billion with separate accounts (August 2026) | Concession and regulatory terms, asset operating plans, capital expenditure |
| Venture and growth | StepStone VC Secondaries Fund VI, $3.3 billion (June 2024); Industry Ventures | Individual companies, preference stacks, shares bought directly from founders and early investors |
| Real estate | CBRE Investment Management Real Estate Partners 2, $1.62 billion (final close December 2025) | Rent rolls, lease expiries, property debt maturities, operator quality |
How Specialists Underwrite Differently From Buyout Buyers
Why interests in these strategies trade at different discounts is set out in pricing by strategy. What differs here is the buyer's working method: a buyout secondaries team forecasts company exits from GP reports, while each specialist rebuilds value from the underlying unit its strategy is made of.
Credit Buyers: Loan by Loan, Often With Leverage
Ares described its fund, announced in January 2026, as the largest dedicated institutional credit secondaries fund by LP commitments, buying mainly senior secured, floating-rate loan portfolios backed by private equity sponsors through LP-led and continuation vehicle (CV) deals. The $7.1 billion headline sits on about $4 billion of LP equity, double the $2 billion target, with the rest from affiliated vehicles and anticipated leverage. Financing turns a loan yield into an equity return, so a credit bid can depend partly on a lender.
The work is done on the loan tape, and the targets are lower than in buyout. In Evercore's first-half 2025 survey, 76% of responding credit secondaries buyers aimed for net internal rates of return (IRRs) of 10% to 14%, and the rest 15% to 19%.
- Loan Tape
A loan-by-loan data file for a credit portfolio listing each borrower, facility, commitment, outstanding balance, coupon, maturity, covenant position, internal rating, and fair value. Credit secondaries buyers price a fund interest by re-underwriting the tape rather than relying on the fund's reported NAV.
Infrastructure Buyers: The Asset Behind the Fund
Blackstone's fourth infrastructure secondaries fund closed in September 2025 at $5.5 billion, against a $4 billion target and the $3.75 billion raised by its predecessor. StepStone's first commingled infrastructure secondaries fund reached its $1.5 billion hard cap, or $1.7 billion with separate accounts, and by its August 2026 close was about half deployed across 26 LP-interest and GP-led deals, many in the middle market.
These buyers read the documents a buyout team skims: concession agreements, regulatory settlements, contract expiries, and capital expenditure plans. StepStone credits part of its edge to a wider platform deploying about $13 billion a year across primaries, secondaries and co-investments, which shows it funds and assets before they trade. A buyer that already models the assets can bid in the first round without waiting for data it may never get.
Venture Buyers: Companies, Cap Tables and Direct Shares
StepStone's sixth venture secondaries fund closed in June 2024 at $3.3 billion, which the firm called the largest fund exclusively pursuing venture secondaries to date. Its mandate spans shares bought from founders and early investors in mature companies, LP interests in venture funds, and strips, tenders and continuation funds for managers.
- Venture Secondaries
Purchases of existing venture capital exposure, either LP interests in venture funds or shares in private venture-backed companies bought directly from founders, employees, or early investors. Direct share purchases usually need company approval and are subject to transfer restrictions in the company's own documents.
Underwriting runs company by company, because a few names carry most of a venture fund's value. The specialist asks where each company sits in its preference stack, the order explained in cap tables and liquidation preferences, what the next round or listing could look like, and what the company's own transfer rules allow.
Real Estate Buyers: Property Operators on the Buy Side
CBRE Investment Management's second real estate secondaries fund beat its fundraising target, raising $1.62 billion against $1.25 billion by its December 2025 final close, to buy income-producing assets at a discount in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific using its own research and operator relationships.
A real estate specialist underwrites buildings: rent rolls, lease expiries, local market rents, and the maturity of each property's mortgage, the property-level view described in real estate fund of funds and secondaries. A buyer that also manages property brings operating data no generalist has, and a conflict the advisor must manage.
How Much Specialist Capital There Is
Evercore's first-half 2025 survey counted about $21 billion of dry powder dedicated to credit secondaries, 12% of the total available to the secondary market, and 65% of respondents expected to raise more dedicated credit capital within twelve months. Infrastructure, venture and real estate pools are smaller; the latest segment volumes are tracked in credit, infrastructure, and venture secondaries trends.
Each dedicated fund also runs a deployment clock: a fresh fund bids to put money to work, one late in its investment period may not bid at all, and with few buyers per segment one fund's position can move the clearing price.
Selling a Specialist Portfolio: What the Advisor Changes
In a mixed portfolio, the advisor's job is to let each specialist see the part it prices best, without losing the competitive tension a single broad auction creates.
Splitting the Book Into Strategy Sleeves
The tool is a strategy sleeve: the non-buyout interests carved into separate lots, each marketed to its own buyer group with its own data, the approach behind mosaic bids. Generalists can still submit a whole-portfolio bid, which gives the seller a comparison.
Short Lists, Leads and Backstops
Each sleeve gets a short list, often a handful of credible bidders rather than dozens. The advisor checks conflicts closely, since a specialist may already be an LP in the fund or, as a sector manager, a competitor of the GP whose consent the transfer needs. It also confirms financing early, because a credit bid resting on an acquisition facility carries the closing risk described in leverage in secondaries.
In GP-led deals the same logic decides who can lead: a credit or infrastructure CV needs a lead able to price loans or assets, with generalists joining as syndicate investors, and the strategy-specific hurdles are set out in GP-leds beyond buyout.
The seller is trading competition for understanding. A generalist field is deep but brings a hurdle and a knowledge gap that both widen the discount; a specialist field prices the assets well but has few names. The advisor's work is to capture the understanding without losing the tension only a second credible bidder creates, and to know before launch which sleeves have that second bidder.
