CVC Raises $10 Billion as Private Equity Secondaries Scale to Meet Liquidity Demand

Jersey-based private equity and investment advisory firm CVC has raised $10 billion for its largest private equity secondaries fund to date, nearly doubling the size of its predecessor as institutional investors commit more capital to strategies designed to provide liquidity across aging private equity portfolios.

CVC Secondary Partners closed Secondary Opportunities Fund VI, or SOF VI, with $10 billion of aggregate commitments, up from $5.8 billion for its predecessor in 2023 and $2.7 billion for the strategy’s 2019 fund. The vehicle exceeded its $7 billion target and attracted more than 200 returning and new limited partners, according to CVC. About half of the capital came from investors new to the Secondary Opportunities Fund series.

The Sept. 3 close gives CVC substantially more capital to acquire LP fund portfolios and participate in GP-led transactions at a time when slower private equity exits and longer holding periods are increasing demand for secondary-market liquidity.

The fundraising also shows how secondaries are becoming a larger part of diversified private-market platforms. CVC Secondary Partners now manages about €20 billion ($23.3 billion) across private equity and credit secondaries, while CVC manages €212 billion across its broader investment platform.

Fund VI is nearly twice the size of its predecessor

The progression of CVC’s flagship secondaries strategy illustrates the rapid increase in capital available to secondary buyers.

SOF IV raised $2.7 billion in 2019. SOF V increased that figure to $5.8 billion in 2023. The latest $10 billion close represents an increase of roughly 72% from Fund V and nearly four times the capital raised for Fund IV.

CVC had already raised $9.3 billion for SOF VI by June 30, when the manager reported its half-year results. At that point, the fund was more than 60% larger than its predecessor and well above its $7 billion target.

The official CVC Secondary Partners fund-close announcement said the new vehicle will remain focused on the private equity secondaries mid-market, targeting buyout funds managed by established general partners.

SOF VI will pursue two principal transaction types: purchases of LP portfolios and GP-led secondaries.

LP-led transactions typically involve an existing investor selling interests in private equity funds to another buyer. GP-led transactions are initiated by the fund manager and can include continuation vehicles that transfer one or more portfolio companies into a new fund, giving existing investors the choice to receive liquidity or retain exposure.

That combination gives CVC exposure to two of the principal sources of secondary-market deal flow.

Exit constraints are creating more secondaries supply

The fundraising comes as private equity managers and LPs continue searching for alternatives to conventional exits.

Buyout funds have held portfolio companies for longer as elevated financing costs, valuation gaps and uneven IPO and M&A markets have made realizations more difficult. Limited partners, meanwhile, need distributions to finance new commitments and rebalance portfolios.

Secondaries can provide liquidity without requiring the underlying portfolio companies themselves to be sold.

PitchBook data cited in its coverage showed global secondaries fundraising reached $140 billion in 2025. Another $54.3 billion had been raised across 49 vehicles in 2026 at the time of CVC’s close, including $21.4 billion across 13 European funds.

PE NEWSWIRE has tracked the same liquidity pressure through structured fund-stake transactions gaining momentum among private equity investors. Those transactions include preferred-equity structures that provide cash against future fund distributions rather than requiring an outright sale of the underlying fund interests.

CVC’s $10 billion pool gives the manager significantly more capacity to participate on the buyer side of this liquidity cycle.

CVC is already deploying into large LP portfolios

The manager’s expansion is not limited to fundraising.

In February, CVC agreed to acquire about $1.1 billion of private equity fund interests from M&G Investments. The portfolio was primarily composed of interests in North American middle-market buyout funds, according to PitchBook.

CVC has also formed a strategic partnership with American International Group that will establish a private equity secondaries evergreen platform. Under that arrangement, AIG will contribute as much as $1.5 billion of existing private equity holdings as a cornerstone investor.

The official CVC-AIG secondaries partnership announcement shows how the manager is extending beyond traditional closed-end secondary funds into structures capable of holding and acquiring assets on a more continuous basis.

Evergreen vehicles differ from conventional private equity funds because they do not rely on the same fixed fund life. That can make them particularly useful for investors seeking recurring access to secondary transactions and managers seeking a more permanent source of acquisition capital.

For CVC, combining a $10 billion flagship fund with an evergreen platform broadens both its investor base and the types of secondary transactions it can pursue.

GP-led transactions become mainstream liquidity tools

GP-led secondaries are also moving deeper into mainstream private equity portfolio management.

PE NEWSWIRE recently covered Dragoneer’s $1 billion GP-led secondary transaction, which used sought-after private technology holdings including exposure to OpenAI and SpaceX to help support a continuation vehicle.

The transaction demonstrated how managers can use continuation structures not simply to postpone exits but to match assets requiring longer holding periods with a new investor base.

CVC’s strategy is deliberately balanced between these GP-led opportunities and conventional LP portfolio purchases.

That balance matters because the two markets respond to different liquidity pressures. LP sales are frequently driven by portfolio rebalancing, allocation limits or the need to generate cash. GP-led deals are more often driven by managers seeking additional ownership time for selected companies while providing existing LPs with an exit option.

A $10 billion fund allows CVC to participate at meaningful scale in both.

CVC builds secondaries into a broader private-markets platform

The fund close also reflects CVC’s evolution beyond its traditional buyout franchise.

CVC reported €153 billion of fee-paying assets under management as of June 30, up 9% from a year earlier. Fee-paying assets across credit, secondaries and infrastructure increased 19% over the same period, faster than the firm’s overall growth.

Total CVC assets under management stood at €212 billion as of June 30. CVC Secondary Partners has a team of 60 dedicated investment professionals and about €20 billion under management across private equity and credit secondaries.

The manager has also moved into credit secondaries, an adjacent market where investors trade exposures to private loans and credit funds rather than private equity interests.

CVC said it sees scope to expand further into credit and infrastructure secondaries.

That strategy puts CVC in competition not only with specialist secondary firms but also with other diversified alternative asset managers seeking to build liquidity businesses around their existing private-market franchises.

Scale becomes increasingly important in secondaries

The $10 billion close demonstrates how scale is changing the competitive structure of the secondary market.

Large LP portfolio sales and multi-asset continuation transactions can require billions of dollars of equity capital. Buyers also need enough diversification capacity to acquire portfolios containing interests across numerous managers, vintages and underlying companies.

Managers with large pools of committed capital can therefore pursue transactions that smaller secondary buyers may need to syndicate or avoid.

At the same time, scale creates deployment pressure. A $10 billion fund must source a substantially larger volume of attractive transactions than a $2.7 billion or $5.8 billion predecessor while maintaining pricing discipline.

CVC’s ability to do that will depend partly on whether secondary deal supply continues expanding alongside fundraising.

The underlying liquidity conditions remain supportive. Private equity LPs still face a backlog of unrealized assets, while GPs are increasingly using continuation vehicles and other structured transactions to generate distributions without selling companies into unfavorable exit markets.

For CVC, that environment has turned a business once considered adjacent to traditional private equity into a €20 billion platform with room to expand into additional asset classes.

SOF VI’s $10 billion close is therefore more than another large fundraising. It demonstrates how secondary capital is becoming part of the core infrastructure of private markets — providing liquidity between investors and managers when traditional exits alone are insufficient to recycle the industry’s growing stock of private assets.