(After Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18)

Shall I compare thee to a secondary?
Thou art fee-free and more accessible:
Dry powder and select buyers’ bid prices rise;
Portfolios of concentrated bets may not diversify;
Sometime too heavy the super carry hangs;
And often is EBITDA multiple too great;
And every deal’s returns sometime decline,
By chance or the Fed’s rate hikes untrimm’d;
But thy usefulness to dealmakers shall not dip
When GPs want to take down bigger targets;
Nor shall the SEC claim thou wanders in its shade
When fundraising decisions thou help remake.
So long as pensions invest and consultants advise,
So lives co-investment, even as single assets thrive.

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December 2021

Michael Baruch is a senior reporter at Secondaries Investor and Private Equity International and a poet in his spare time. You can read his latest poetry here.