Strategic Partners raises world’s largest secondaries programme

Blackstone’s Strategic Partners unit has held the final close on the largest secondaries programme ever raised, at $25 billion, setting a new bar for the evolution of the secondaries market.

The New York-headquartered group raised $22.2 billion for Strategic Partners IX, according to a statement. The fund launched in April 2021 and had a $13.5 billion target, according to Secondaries Investor data.

The firm also raised $2.7 billion for its inaugural GP-led focused fund, Strategic Partners GP Solutions.

“We remain committed to generating strong risk-adjusted returns for the millions of beneficiaries that our investors represent,” Verdun Perry, global head of Strategic Partners, said in the statement. “With substantial scale and our multi-strategy footprint, we believe we are well-positioned to capitalise on the vast, and growing, opportunities across the secondary market.”

At $22.2 billion, the flagship secondaries fund is the seventh-largest private equity fund ever raised, behind Thoma Bravo’s $24.3 billion Fund XV and ahead of Insight Partners’ Fund XII, according to PEI data.

The fund is twice as large as its predecessor, which raised $11.1 billion in 2019 and which did not have a dedicated GP-led vehicle alongside it.

The GP-led fund had raised at least $2 billion as of November, as Secondaries Investor reported, and also marks a milestone for GP-leds. It is one of the largest funds dedicated to GP-leds, behind ICG Strategic Equity’s Fund IV, which is understood to have held its final close on $5.3 billion last year.

Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett advised Blackstone on the fund formation, according to a separate statement.

Speaking to Secondaries Investor in December, Perry said diversified LP-led deals should increase significantly this year, compared with last year.

“As we go into 2023, the split between LP-led and GP-led could change and we could see significantly more LP-leds,” Perry said. “2022 was an anomaly because of the dislocation and the wide bid-ask spread. [In 2023] I expect a sharp increase in the number of LP-leds due to LP overallocation to private equity.”