Where the Secondaries Market Stands and How to Read It

Introduction

Most of what is known about the size and pricing of the secondary market comes from one side of the table. Evercore's review draws on a survey of more than 100 active secondary buyers, Lazard's on more than 80 and Campbell Lutyens' on more than 120, while Jefferies builds its figures from transactions its own team advised plus publicly reported deals. These are the advisory franchises behind the reviews, and their first-half 2026 reviews count between $118 billion and $124 billion of volume. That range looks precise, yet each number rests on its own measurement basis, its own rule for classifying preferred equity and its own sample of closed deals. Read together, the reviews form a market dashboard: volume, the split between sales by limited partners (LP-led deals) and transactions run by general partners (GP-led deals), pricing, buyer capital, sellers, segments and the forward view. The skill that makes it useful in a pitch, a board paper or an interview is reading every dial with its unit attached.

Each review publishes a total, an LP-led and GP-led split and a year-on-year comparison with the same half of 2025. The table keeps the four headline estimates in separate rows, with the counting method each firm describes, because a figure from one firm cannot be added to or averaged with another's.

Where the Four Agree

Three readings hold on every rulebook. The half was larger than a year earlier in all four surveys, and a first-half record in the three that rank it: Jefferies, Evercore and Lazard. GP-led volume grew faster than LP-led volume in each survey that allows the comparison, led by single-asset continuation vehicles (CVs), the structures a sponsor uses to move one company from an old fund into a new vehicle with fresh investors. And the LP-led segment held roughly level, between $54 billion and $63 billion depending on the counter.

Where They Split

The disagreements sit below the total. The LP-led direction runs from an 8% fall at Campbell Lutyens to a 4% rise at Evercore, with Jefferies flat, and Lazard alone records an LP-led majority. The GP-led majority holds at Jefferies and Evercore and not at Lazard or Campbell Lutyens. Growth rates range from 9% to 28% on totals that differ far less, because the prior-year halves they are measured against run from $97 billion at Lazard to $110 billion at Campbell Lutyens.

Where the surveys agree, a claim can rest on any one of them. Where they split, the defensible statement names the survey, and the explanation usually lies in how each firm counts rather than in what traded. That habit of attribution is what separates a usable answer to market and industry questions from a recited statistic.

A survey figure carries five attributes that rarely appear in a headline: its measurement basis, its classification rules, its period, its status as a result or an intention, and the sample behind it. Each one can move a number by more than the gap between two surveys.

Measurement Basis: Volume Is Not Cash

The methodology page of Evercore's first-half 2026 secondary market review defines volume as purchase price plus unfunded commitments, the capital a buyer must still contribute to the funds it acquires, and Campbell Lutyens uses the same convention. Jefferies' and Lazard's mid-year reports do not state a basis.

Transaction Volume (Secondaries)

The size a secondary market review assigns to a completed deal. Evercore and Campbell Lutyens measure it as the purchase price plus the unfunded commitments the buyer assumes, so it exceeds the cash paid to sellers and compares cleanly only between reviews that use the same basis.

An illustrative LP selling a fund interest with $100 million of net asset value (NAV) and $20 million of unfunded commitments at 90% of NAV receives about $90 million, before the adjustments for interim cash flows explained in pricing LP interests. On the price-plus-unfunded basis, the same trade adds $110 million to volume. A half in which younger funds with larger unfunded balances change hands therefore reports more volume for the same cash. Vehicle leverage stretches the gap further: in Evercore's credit data, counting the debt inside credit CVs roughly doubles the half's figure, from about $10 billion of equity to about $20 billion of deal value, two honest numbers for one half.

Prices carry a basis as well. Lazard expresses CV pricing against NAV at each transaction's reference date, and Evercore quotes its credit pricing gross, before adjustments for cash flows after that date. A price of 95% on a mark that is six months old is therefore 95% of an old number, not of today's value, and two surveys quoting the same percentage may be measuring against marks of different ages.

Classification: Where Preferred Equity Lands

The second attribute decides which column a deal enters. Evercore counts single-asset and multi-asset CVs, GP-led preferred equity and tender offers as GP-led, and LP portfolio sales, managed funds and LP preferred equity as LP-led. Lazard places preferred equity and other structured solutions inside GP-led, at 14% of the segment, excluding certain direct secondary sales and deferral mechanisms. Campbell Lutyens' first-half 2026 report keeps preferred equity as a third bucket of $12 billion, 10% of its total, which it attributes mainly to structured solutions at the GP level.

Moved wholesale into GP-led, that bucket would lift Campbell Lutyens' GP-led figure to $66 billion, or 55% of its total, and turn its tie into the same GP-led majority Jefferies and Evercore report. That is an upper bound, since some of the bucket may sit at LP level, but it shows how much a label can decide. The instrument itself, a priority claim on a portfolio's cash flows ranking ahead of the fund's own investors, is explained in preferred equity and structured fund solutions.

Period: A First-Half Record Is Not a Record Half

Secondary volume is seasonal. Evercore's data put 45% of annual volume in the first half and 55% in the second on average over 2022-2025, and Lazard found about 59% of single-asset and 61% of multi-asset CV deployment landing in the second half across 2024 and 2025. A first-half record compares like with like, but it does not say the market grew from one half to the next.

Trailing-twelve-month totals remove the seasonal pattern: Lazard counts about $260 billion over the twelve months to June 2026 and Jefferies about $252 billion, each on its own basis.

Results, Targets and Forecasts

Some figures describe what happened; others describe intentions. Evercore's $154 billion second-half fundraising figure is a target reported by buyers, not capital raised, and Lazard's $77 billion is dry powder respondents say they have earmarked, not deals done. Lazard's respondents also expect their own GP-led deployment to rise by an average of 20% in the second half, which Lazard itself describes as a statement of demand intentions rather than of market volume. A fund size comes in three states (target, capital raised so far, final close), and only a final close fixes the size of the pool. Full-year projections printed in the same reviews are forecasts that belong to their authors, however closely they sit beside the results.

Sample: Who Answered and Which Deals Survived

Three of the four reviews rest on buyer surveys, weighted by what each respondent transacted, so their pricing records what buyers paid on deals they closed rather than what sellers were offered. Evercore's own disclaimer warns that responses may not be representative of the broader market, and Campbell Lutyens' volume is concentrated enough that 19 participants accounted for 70% of it. Failed deals drop out altogether: Lazard's interim 2026 secondary market report cites respondents reporting that about 27% of transactions failed or were paused in the first half, which tilts reported pricing toward the deals strong enough to close. Jefferies' sample is shaped instead by which mandates it advised and which deals became public.

Weighting matters as much as who answers. Campbell Lutyens weights each respondent's figures by transaction value, and Lazard computes its GP-led pricing from the volume each respondent completed, so a buyer that closed several large continuation vehicles moves the averages far more than a dozen small buyers do. A pricing statistic from these reviews sits closer to what the largest buyers paid than to the typical deal, a useful caution when advising a seller of a small or unusual portfolio.

A figure that passes all five checks can be set beside another survey's figure for the same dial. One that fails any of them can still be quoted, but only on its own, with its label. The same routine is what interviewers probe when a candidate cites a statistic, which is why discussing secondaries deals and market trends treats the source and period as part of the answer.

Capital is the dial with the widest spread between surveys, because each firm measures a different pool. The definitions, and why published figures differ by more than $100 billion, are set out in the capital wall article; the mid-year readings are these.

The readings agree on direction: deployment outran fundraising. Evercore reads its 10% decline as sustained deployment rather than weaker appetite and puts its capital overhang, dry powder plus leverage and LP co-investment, at roughly one year of volume, "healthy, but not abundant". Jefferies has its overhang multiple at 1.2x, down from 1.4x at the end of 2025. Concentration is the second shared message: the largest ten or so buyers hold 58% of Evercore's dry powder, and in Lazard's survey 6% of investors hold about 43% of the capital earmarked for second-half GP-led deals, so a handful of anchors set clearing prices on the largest transactions.

Dedicated Available Capital (Secondaries)

Jefferies' measure of secondary buyer capacity: equity dry powder in dedicated secondary funds, plus near-term closed-end and retail fundraising, plus estimated leverage taken at 15% of dry powder and current fundraising. Because it includes money not yet raised or borrowed, it runs well above dry powder alone for the same date.

Flagship fundraising shows the refill in all three states. CVC Secondary Partners announced a $10 billion final close for Secondary Opportunities Fund VI on September 3, 2026, a figure that includes parallel funds and accounts and CVC's own commitments, against $5.8 billion for its predecessor. Clipway announced in July a final close for its first fund that made its debut platform $6.4 billion, aimed at LP-led purchases of North American and Western European buyout funds. Blackstone's Strategic Partners Fund X had about $14 billion toward a $22.5 billion target in July, according to Secondaries Investor: a running tally, not a close.

Beyond volume and capital, six readings complete the state of the market. Each appears here with one headline figure, its source and period, and a pointer to the article that carries its detail and caveats.

LP Portfolio Pricing

Jefferies' July 2026 review put average LP portfolio pricing, the price buyers paid for limited partners' fund interests as a percentage of NAV, at 87% in the first half of 2026, unchanged from full-year 2025. The steady average hides moving parts by strategy, fund age and software exposure, which LP-led pricing trends by strategy sets out survey by survey.

The GP-Led Market

Single-asset CVs are the growth engine of the half: Evercore counted about $34 billion of them, up 88% on a year earlier. Par pricing, super-carry terms and the majority question are covered in the GP-led market and the single-asset CV shift.

Liquidity Pressure and the Seller Base

Supply starts with cash that is not arriving. Jefferies puts the annual distribution yield on LP portfolios near 10% in the first half of 2026, against a 25% average since 2001.

Distribution Yield (Private Equity)

Cash distributed to limited partners over a year as a percentage of the net asset value of their private equity holdings. A low yield means exits are returning little cash, so investors that need liquidity for new commitments or payouts turn to the secondary market.

Providers measure it on different fund universes and periods, which is why Bain's 2026 Global Private Equity Report puts 2025 distributions at about 14% of NAV while Jefferies' LP-portfolio gauge sits lower: both describe the same drought, not the same ratio. Who answers that pressure by selling has shifted, with sovereign wealth funds at 21% of Evercore's LP-led volume against 12% in 2025, the rotation traced in the changing secondaries seller base.

Credit, Infrastructure and Venture

Infrastructure secondaries reached $12 billion in Evercore's first-half count, up 33%, most of it through continuation vehicles; private credit grew faster on a basis that includes CV leverage, and venture held flat. Each segment's volume, capital and pricing are in credit, infrastructure, and venture secondaries trends.

The Multi-Year Cycle

Evercore's series grew roughly sixfold from 2016 to 2025, with a 23% fall in 2022 along the way. Separating the cyclical part of that growth, driven by scarce distributions, from the structural part, driven by sponsor adoption of CVs and permanent buyer capital, is the work of the secondaries growth cycle.

The Forward View

Forecasts sit on a dial of their own and always carry an author: Lazard's base case puts volume at about $305 billion in 2027. What that and the longer-range calls assume, and the drivers that decide whether they hold, are weighed in the secondaries market outlook.

A dashboard describes; a view connects. The most useful connection pairs a supply reading with a capital reading for the same segment from the same survey, so that both share one basis and one sample. Evercore's figures lend themselves to it, because the review splits both volume and dry powder by LP-led and GP-led deals.

Pairs drawn across surveys break that discipline: Jefferies' $290 billion of dedicated capital set against Evercore's volume mixes a broad pool with a narrower count and flatters the cushion. For an advisor, a same-survey pair turns into launch advice: which segment's buyers have capital to spare, and whether a portfolio is strong enough to compete for what remains. For a candidate interviewing for a private capital advisory (PCA) seat, it turns a list of statistics into an argument about where the next sale will clear. Two readings from one review, set against each other, say more about the next sale than every survey's headline side by side.