Dip in fundraising for secondaries private equity vehicles

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Montana Capital Partners held a final close for its oversubscribed mcp Opportunity Secondary Program III this week at its hard-cap of €400 million. The oversubscribed secondaries-dedicated vehicle had initially targeted €300 million but interest in the fund was estimated to have amounted to around €600 million. PEI’s Research & Analytics team has taken a look at how the successful fundraise of the platform reflects aggregate capital raised for secondaries vehicles as a whole.

To date in 2015, $11.96 billion has been gathered by secondaries-focused closed-ended private equity funds. A total of $29.27 billion was collected in 2014, making it a bumper year for the secondaries market. H1 was particularly strong, in part due to ASF VI which accounted for more than half of total capital raised when it closed in April 2014 at $9 billion.

Despite the close of the largest ever secondary fund in 2015, H1 aggregate capital failed to match 2014’s figure, falling short by $5.94 billion. Lexington Partners closed Lexington Capital Partners VIII at $2.1 billion above its target in April 2015, raising $10.1 billion. Total capital gathered in Q3 2015 so far has come from the close of just one vehicle, the aforementioned mcp Opportunity Secondary Program III.

There are 46 secondaries-dedicated private equity funds currently in market or coming to market targeting $37.62 billion collectively. So far these vehicles have collected $9.11 billion from investors.

This article previously appeared in Private Equity International.