Looking back: 5 deals that caught our eye in 2022

As recently as a few years ago, press releases publicising secondaries deals were a rarity; today they are almost a weekly occurrence.

Below is a list of five deals that caught our eye over the past year – a mix of publicised deals and some where Secondaries Investor had to dig a little harder to find out the details.

Deutsche Private Equity continuation fund

Deutsche Private Equity, one of Germany’s best know private equity firms, ran a process to move two assets out of its 2016-vintage DPE Deutschland III fund, Secondaries Investor reported in September. AlpInvest Partners, HarbourVest Partners and Pantheon were buyers in the PJT Partners-advised process. The transaction was worth roughly €750 million, including follow-on capital.

Hahn & Co’s massive single-asset deal

In July, Coller Capital said it was co-leading the largest GP-led transaction in Asia. The deal involved a $1.5 billion single-asset continuation fund deal centred on Ssangyong, South Korea’s largest cement company by market share in an Evercore-advised process. Hahn & Co, the GP, said it intended to use the five-year life of the vehicle to transform Ssangyong into “Korea’s leading waste management group”.

ECP’s Calpine single-asset

As large GP-led deals go, this was a standout in 2022. Energy Capital Partners closed a $1.6 billion continuation fund for US power company Calpine Corporation, anchored by Pantheon and existing consortium investor Phoenix Insurance. PJT Partners advised the New Jersey-based energy manager and noted in a report in the second half of the year that the transaction was $5.3 billion in total size. A source familiar with the transaction told Secondaries Investor that the $1.6 billion in commitments raised for the transaction did not account for non-ECP fund investors in the asset who were offered liquidity as part of the process.

CalPERS portfolio sale

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System brought a multi-billion fund portfolio to market at the beginning of the year, as Secondaries Investor reported. By March, Lexington Partners had emerged as a buyer of at least part of the portfolio, with Glendower Capital also revealed as a buyer later in the year. The total sale was reported to be around $6 billion by purchase price plus unfunded commitments.

Carlyle stapled tender

Blue-chip firms using the market for secondaries purposes wasn’t a new trend in 2022; what caught our eye was to see one using it for a stapled process. In October, affiliate title Buyouts reported that Carlyle Group was running a process to allow investors in its seventh global flagship fund to cash out of their stakes in an Evercore-advised process. The deal would also include a shot of fresh capital from the buyer into the Carlyle’s eighth flagship fund. The global alternatives firm is understood to have sought an extension to raise Fund VIII to August 2023. The WSJ reported in December that Partners Group was among buyers in the process.