Secondaries funds versus direct secondary purchases for offices

A family office can gain secondaries exposure by committing to a secondaries fund or by buying LP interests itself. The fund route gives diversification across hundreds of underlying companies and a manager with sourcing and process capability, in exchange for a layer of management fee and carried interest on top of the underlying funds' own charges. The direct route removes that layer and gives control over what is bought, but requires staff to run diligence and GP relationships to secure consent, and it produces a concentrated portfolio. For most offices below a few hundred million dollars of private markets assets, the fund route or an evergreen vehicle is the practical choice; above that, a direct programme becomes feasible alongside fund commitments.

The fund route

Secondaries funds are large and increasingly concentrated among a few managers. Ardian's ASF IX closed at $30bn, which Börsen-Zeitung reported as the largest secondary fund of all time, with more than 465 investors and 22% of capital from private wealth, up from 11% in the predecessor. PitchBook's Q2 2026 fundraising report counted $28.6bn raised by 32 secondaries funds in the first half of 2026, with a rolling twelve-month total of $95.1bn, down from $119.8bn a year earlier. The largest closes in H1 2026 were Ares Credit Secondaries I at $4bn, Blue Owl Strategic Equity Fund at $3bn and Portfolio Advisors Secondary Fund V at $3bn, and funds of $1bn to $5bn took 80.4% of the capital. Private debt secondaries alone accounted for 45.3% of H1 commitments.

Capital is concentrated at the top. Lazard's interim 2026 report found that the 6% of market participants with more than $5.5bn of capital held 43% of deployable capital for H2 2026, while the 81% with less than $1.5bn held 34%. Campbell Lutyens' 1H 2026 report found the top 19 participants accounted for 70% of volume. For the largest LP portfolio sales, a handful of funds set the price.

Fund terms are not published in the adviser reports, and this article does not quote them. The structural point is that a secondaries fund charges its own fee and carry while the underlying funds continue to charge theirs, so the investor bears two layers. The offset is that the manager buys at a discount, which the Jefferies July 2026 review put at 13% on average for LP portfolios in H1 2026, and that the fund's capital is deployed faster than a primary fund's.

The evergreen variant

Semi-liquid evergreen vehicles have become the main route for private wealth. Evercore's H1 2026 review estimated about $500bn in semi-liquid vehicles industry-wide, with more than $130bn managed by secondary firms and roughly 45% of that allocated to secondaries, and found that 53% of secondary buyers now operate one. Lazard put the share of its respondents with an evergreen or '40 Act vehicle at 40%, up from 34% at the end of 2025. These vehicles accept smaller subscriptions, offer periodic redemption windows and deploy continuously. Campbell Lutyens found they paid 92.1% of NAV for LP portfolios against 86.7% for the market, and that 63% of their deployment went into GP-led deals. An office using one should expect a thinner discount and a growing weight in continuation vehicles.

The direct route

Buying LP interests directly means running the process described in how selling an LP interest works from the other side: sourcing, diligence on each underlying fund, bidding, negotiating the purchase agreement, obtaining GP consent and completing the GP's transfer and subscription documents. Morgan Lewis's Limited Partner Secondary Sales 101 sets out what that involves: a data room of fund documents and three years of tax returns, representations and indemnities, withholding certificates, a 30-day GP notice period in many agreements and possible delays from publicly traded partnership rules. GP consent is not automatic, and a GP may prefer a known secondaries fund to a new family office investor.

The economics favour direct buying when the office can do the work. There is no second fee layer, the office chooses the GPs and vintages it wants, and it can target smaller interests that large funds ignore. The costs are staff time, legal fees per transaction and concentration: an office buying five interests holds five funds, not several hundred.

Which route for which office

Minimum subscription sizes vary by manager and are not published in the sources used here, which is why the table describes capability rather than ticket size.

A common pattern among larger offices is to use a secondaries fund or two for diversified exposure and to buy directly where they know the GP, often interests in funds they already hold. That combination captures the discount on the positions they understand best and leaves the broad market to managers who see every deal. The broader case for the strategy is in secondaries for family office buyers.