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The world may be reeling from the latest in a seemingly unending spate of systemic shocks, but the secondaries industry remains resolutely optimistic. And with good reason: secondaries volumes hit new records last year at USD 160 billion, according to data from Evercore, leaving the industry’s key players feeling confident that 2025 will bring new highs.

“We are predicting that secondaries volumes will reach USD 200 billion this year. That is being driven by a combination of the maturation of the industry, the innovation within the secondary market over the past decade and the expansion into new asset classes, such as infrastructure, real estate and credit. That has all led to tremendous growth,” says Yann Robard, managing partner at Dawson Partners, speaking on Private Equity International’s secondaries roundtable.

“Then factor in current macroeconomic dynamics. The past three to four years have been far from easy: in 2022, public markets declined, leaving many LPs overallocated. Then, in 2023, distributions dried up. Returns remained muted in 2024, and while there was some renewed optimism at the back end of last year, 2025 has been marked by tariffs, a new world order and geopolitical uncertainty which has put deals back on pause. LPs have been through a lot.

“Meanwhile, even when distributions do come back in private equity, we also expect capital calls will increase at the same time. Said differently, we believe LPs will be running on a treadmill of sorts when it comes to their allocation issues. Bear in mind that 49 percent of LPs report being overallocated today, compared with 22 percent in 2019. These are not issues that will be resolved overnight, and this all feeds into robust secondaries deal flow.”

Nate Walton, partner and head of private equity secondaries at Ares Management, agrees. “There are structural developments that have contributed to record secondaries deal volumes, including innovation around the solutions we as an industry can provide. There now exists this cyclical search for liquidity. We believe the combination of these structural and cyclical features will continue to drive record secondaries volumes.”

The numbers certainly tell a good story. “There is currently around USD 9 trillion of unrealized NAV sitting in private equity portfolios, triple the level seen in 2017,” says Adam Johnston, partner at StepStone Group. “Combine that with greater awareness and adoption of secondaries solutions by asset owners, whether LPs or GPs, and it is clear that all the ingredients are in place for continued growth.”

Astonishing growth in the GP-led secondaries market has meaningfully contributed to record secondaries volumes. “The explosive growth of the continuation vehicle market over the past five years is not slowing any time soon,” Johnston says Marie-Victoire Rozé, senior managing director and deputy co-head of secondaries and primaries at Ardian, says the growth of the secondaries market is something of a virtuous cycle. “Once a GP or an LP has completed one of these deals and experienced the benefits, they are highly likely to come back to the market as a repeat seller,” she explains. “This is a trend we are observing first hand, and it gives us confidence that deal volumes will continue to grow.”

Indeed, according to Thomas Roche Toussaint, head of secondaries at �۶���Ƶ Asset Management’s Unified Global Alternatives unit, over 60 percent of GP-leds that came to market last year involved first-time sponsors. “In our experience, these sponsors are likely to come back to market two to three years after a successful first process. We definitely see GP-leds becoming an accepted fourth exit route: over 13 percent of all private equity exits last year involved continuation vehicles, compared with six or seven percent in 2022. That demonstrates that CVs have gained real traction.”