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...