Greenhill's Q1 secondaries report landed this morning. Headline number: $68B in transaction volume, up 41% year-over-year. The press will frame this as "LPs flooding for the exits." That is wrong.
The composition tells the real story:
- GP-led continuation funds: 54% of volume (vs. 47% a year ago)
- LP-led portfolio sales: 46%
- Pricing on buyout: 94% of NAV (vs. 87% a year ago)
- Pricing on venture: 71% of NAV (vs. 68%)
What this says: GPs are increasingly the buyers and sellers of their own books. Continuation vehicles are no longer a workaround for difficult exits — they are now a primary liquidity tool, particularly for trophy assets where the GP wants a longer hold than the original fund permits.
For allocators: the secondaries market is now structurally larger and more two-sided than it was even three years ago. The "discount to NAV" framing is increasingly stale. The real question is which GPs are using continuation vehicles to buy time on weak portfolios versus which are using them to extend conviction on the best assets. Diligence on the underlying — not the structure — is the only thing that matters.
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Notes are informal observations from the Beckett team and do not constitute investment advice or an offer of any security.