Deals

LP sales continue to drive secondaries activity as limited partners look for ways to capture liquidity from their illiquid PE portfolios amid a slowdown in distributions.

ICG and Kirkbi A/S acquired Minimax in 2014 with ICG and co-investors acquiring Kirkbi’s stake in 2018.

Permira is moving five assets into a continuation fund including US customer experience solutions provider Genesys, which was previously part of a continuation fund transaction in 2020.

While demand among GPs for liquidity options to pay back LPs in older funds is strong, the limiting factor is the relatively small pool of capital available for such deals.

The buyout giant initially backed Multiversity in 2019 before acquiring 100% of the online university group in 2021.

The deal involves transferring an asset to a continuation fund managed by TRP Capital, a lower mid-market player with no prior engagement in GP-led secondaries.

GP-led deals represented about 44% of the approximately $109bn in total volume last year, with single-asset transactions representing the majority of such deals.

Blue Earth’s secondaries strategy – part of its soon-to-launch multi-strategy fund – has just acquired a portfolio of fund stakes from a UK development finance institution.

The Morgan Stanley-advised process on ski resort Alterra Mountain was backed by investors understood to include Singapore’s GIC.

The firm has previously tapped the secondaries market to run a €1.3bn single-asset process on investor administration group IQ-EQ.