Fundraising Strategy and LP Relations

• Pitches are shifting from "what, how, why" to "why, how, what," leading with the LP's mandate
• Investment decks are moving team background into the top third, since LPs underwrite the team first
• Outreach increasingly starts by identifying which of six allocator types a firm is targeting
• Late capital calls and inconsistent side letter execution surface in re-up decisions well before the next fund comes to market
• Makena Capital Management, a $22 billion allocator, now models venture fund holds at 18 years, a constraint that can block a re-up
• First-time fund formation hit its lowest point since 2011, as three firms captured 48 cents of every dollar raised last quarter
• Ankyra launched in limited beta as an agentic hub for tracking fundraise status and drafting due diligence responses

‍

Fund Structures and Liquidity Mechanisms

• Co-investment capital splits between the main fund and select LPs, for example $400 million fund against $100 million co-invest
• GP commitments typically run 1 to 2 percent of fund size, paid over 2 to 4 years, with a "cashless" waiver option
• Continuation funds are a leading liquidity mechanism, but with the GP on both sides, valuation review carries the weight arms length pricing normally would
• Jefferies Credit Partners is raising close to €1 billion for an evergreen continuation fund that recycles capital out of its own private credit book
• Roughly 29,000 PE-backed companies exist today against exit volumes that have stayed flat, up from about 5,000
• CFOs convert alternative portfolios into rated debt and equity tranches, while parallel sleeves borrow against a fund's own uncalled commitment
• Australia's fund finance market is shifting from plain vanilla capital call facilities toward bespoke structures, with sovereign wealth funds more active in negotiating terms

‍

Capital Raises and Fund Closes

• HIG Europe Capital Partners IV closed at €1.6 billion in January and Inflexion Buyout Fund VII closed at €4.5 billion in March
• FTAI Aviation's first fund raised $2 billion in equity, deployed roughly $6 billion across 300+ aircraft, and paid its first distribution in June 2026
• FTAI's second fund closed a $2 billion warehouse facility, expandable to $3 billion, taking total financing to $5.5 billion
• Sunrise Capital V closed at $500 million, oversubscribed in five months with 81 percent of commitments from existing LPs
• Pantheon's inaugural private equity Collateralized Fund Obligation closed at $1 billion, exceeding its $750 million target
• Nuveen Green Capital raised just over $1 billion in a first close for its fourth CPACE lending fund, 27 percent more than its predecessor
• The top 10 PE buyout fundraises of H1 2026 raised about $129 billion, led by KKR's $23 billion North America Fund XIV, its largest buyout fund ever

‍

Family Offices and Retail Capital

• Club deals are increasingly bypassing the traditional blind pool private equity fund structure, with family offices setting their own terms
• Institutional pensions allocate 8 to 15 percent of portfolios to private equity, versus 0 to 1 percent for retail investors
• Private equity is now being added to target date retirement funds, a channel most retail savers are not yet tracking
• Indian family offices now allocate 40 to 45 percent of portfolios to alternatives, as its UHNW population nears 20,000
• Across 1,597 analyzed transactions, 88 percent of family offices said they want to invest directly, private equity leading at 73 percent
• Family offices now split new capital roughly evenly between direct investments and fund commitments, with 60 percent running formal investment committees
• Private Equity Club, formed by ex-Cinven executive Nicolas Paulmier, pools entrepreneur capital to back mid-market managers up to €3 billion

‍

Market Data and Performance Trends

• Bain data puts the unsold PE company backlog at roughly 33,000, with average hold periods stretching to around seven years, up from three to five
• Private equity holds roughly $2.4 trillion in dry powder against an estimated $10 trillion in boomer-owned business value changing hands over the next decade
• APAC private equity fundraising hit a 12-year low of $58 billion, per Bain's 2026 APAC PE Report
• Private equity distribution yield dropped from 25 percent of NAV to 11 percent in three years, pushing the secondary market to $240 billion in 2025
• McKinsey's Global Private Markets Report 2026 found buyout returns hit a post-2002 low of 5.7 percent average pooled IRR between 2022 and 2025
• PitchBook's Q2 2026 report shows $74.8 billion raised in H1 2026, with just 12 firms capturing 74.6 percent of the total
• JPMorgan's alternatives research puts global alternative asset AUM at approximately $21.6 trillion in 2025, up from $1.2 trillion in 2000

‍

Thanks to Ali Azzam, Chris Ullman, Raviteja Javvadi, Erin Bauwens, Jake Greenberg, Joseph Argiro, Alejandro Cremades, Desmond Nayak, Ignacio P., Aleksey Chernobelskiy, Nicole DeTommaso, Rajith Shaji, Jon Peyton, Jayendr Vaibhav, John-Austin Saviano, James O'Dowd, Jack Syred, Liam S., Earnest Sweat, Hendrik Jordaan, Lee McCabe, Cedric Teissier, Antoine Drean, John B. Quinn‍, Haris James, Artjom Jalosa, Kelvin Fu, Shayan M., Melisa Itmec, Jeffrey Fidelman, Philip De Vusser, Frister Haveman, Nicola Ebmeyer, Marieme Sane, Alexander Lupachev, Snorre Kofoed-Hansen, John Mosley, James Abbott and Cara Stevens for contributing insights to this edition. Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn: