Evercore reports record $121B in secondaries deals for H1 2026

The private equity secondaries market just posted its best first half ever, and it wasn’t particularly close. Evercore’s latest review pegs total secondary volume at $121 billion for the first six months of 2026, a 19% jump from the same period last year.

The driving force behind the record? Fund managers who would rather restructure their holdings than sell their best assets into an uncertain exit environment. Single-asset continuation vehicles, essentially new fund wrappers that let GPs hold onto prized investments while offering existing investors a chance to cash out, have become the dominant deal structure in the market.

GPs are running the show

The most striking detail in Evercore’s data is the split between who’s initiating these deals. GP-led transactions, where fund managers themselves engineer secondary sales or restructurings, hit $65 billion in H1 2026. That’s a 35% increase year-over-year.

LP-led transactions, the more traditional side of the market where limited partners sell their fund stakes to other buyers, came in at $56 billion. That represents just a 4% bump from last year.

The gap tells a clear story. Fund managers are no longer passive participants waiting for LPs to drive secondary market activity. They’re actively reshaping their portfolios, using continuation vehicles to retain what Nigel Dawn, Evercore’s global head of private capital, calls “trophy” assets, the kind of high-performing companies that GPs believe still have significant upside left.

Dry powder is actually shrinking

While deal volume is surging, the capital waiting on the sidelines is heading in the opposite direction. Estimated dry powder in the secondaries space stands at $194 billion, down 10% year-to-date.

For context, $194 billion in available capital against a $121 billion first-half pace means secondaries buyers still have roughly enough firepower to cover another full half-year of activity at current rates. But the cushion is thinner than it was 12 months ago.

Why trophy assets are staying put

The rise of single-asset continuation vehicles as the leading deal type reflects a broader transformation in how private equity managers think about hold periods. Today’s GPs are extending their relationship with top performers, sometimes for a decade or longer. The continuation vehicle structure lets them do this without the governance headaches of holding an asset past its original fund’s life. Existing LPs who want liquidity can sell their exposure to new investors, while the GP maintains control and keeps earning fees.

Critics have noted that continuation vehicles can also serve as a way for GPs to avoid marking down troubled investments or to keep fee streams alive. But the 35% growth in GP-led volume suggests the market, for now, is treating these structures as legitimate portfolio management tools rather than financial engineering gimmicks.

The capacity pressures Dawn referenced are also worth unpacking. As private equity has ballooned into a multi-trillion-dollar asset class, the number of portfolio companies needing exits at any given time has grown enormously. The secondaries market has stepped in as a pressure valve, providing liquidity when traditional exit routes are congested.

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