Reference
Who actually buys secondaries
Every case study and use case on this site describes a deal from the seller's side. This is the buy side — the institutions with the capital and mandate to purchase LP fund stakes, back GP-led continuation vehicles, or buy direct company positions, plus the marketplaces that connect smaller trades. All 25 entries are real, named institutions with sourced ownership and history, not composites.
Dedicated secondaries specialist
Independent firms whose entire business is buying LP fund stakes, GP-led continuation vehicles, or direct company positions — secondaries is not a side strategy, it is the strategy.
Coller Capital
The firm most often credited with inventing the institutional secondary market.
London, UK
Ardian
Started life inside an insurer, then became one of the largest independent private-markets firms in the world.
Paris, France
HarbourVest Partners
One of the longest-running names in secondaries, still independent after four decades.
Boston, USA
Committed Advisors
A newer, mid-market-focused Paris secondaries manager that has grown fund-over-fund since 2010.
Paris, France (with New York and Singapore offices)
Pomona Capital
A long-running LP-secondaries specialist that also built one of the earliest retail-accessible secondary vehicles.
New York, USA
W Capital Partners
Focused specifically on buying individual company stakes, not fund interests — a different niche from most of this list.
New York, USA
Platform within a diversified manager
Secondaries desks and franchises that operate inside a larger private-markets manager, usually built by acquiring an independent specialist and folding it into a broader platform.
Lexington Partners (Franklin Lexington)
One of the oldest dedicated secondaries firms, now the secondaries engine of a major public asset manager.
New York, USA
Blackstone Strategic Partners
Started as an independent shop, spent over a decade inside Credit Suisse, then became Blackstone's secondaries arm.
New York, USA
AlpInvest Partners
Began as the private-equity arm of two Dutch pension funds before Carlyle bought a controlling stake.
Amsterdam, Netherlands & New York, USA
Ares Secondaries (formerly Landmark Partners)
One of the oldest secondaries specialists, folded into Ares to give it a multi-asset-class secondaries franchise.
Stamford, USA
CVC Secondary Partners (formerly Glendower Capital)
A London secondaries specialist absorbed step-by-step into one of Europe's largest buyout firms.
London, UK
montana capital partners (mcp)
A European secondaries boutique now inside one of the largest global insurers' asset-management arm.
Zug, Switzerland
Goldman Sachs Vintage Strategies
One of the longest-running bank-affiliated secondaries platforms, still expanding into new asset classes.
New York, USA
Industry Ventures
The secondaries specialist focused specifically on venture capital, not buyout — recently acquired by Goldman Sachs.
San Francisco, USA
ICG Strategic Equity
Deliberately narrow: this platform only does GP-led deals, not LP fund-stake purchases.
London, UK & New York, USA
Bridge Investment Group Secondaries (formerly Newbury Partners)
A Connecticut secondaries boutique that became a public real-assets manager's entry into the strategy.
Stamford, USA
Future Standard Secondaries (formerly Portfolio Advisors)
One of the most recent name changes in the industry — a 30-year-old firm operating under a brand less than a year old.
Darien, USA
Public multi-strategy manager
Publicly listed private-markets firms where secondaries is one of several strategies (alongside primaries, co-investment, and direct credit) sold to institutional and increasingly individual investors.
StepStone Group
A publicly traded private-markets solutions firm with secondaries as one of several core strategies.
New York, USA
Hamilton Lane
StepStone's closest publicly traded peer, also active across secondaries and co-investment.
Conshohocken, USA
Adams Street Partners
One of the oldest private-markets firms in the industry, secondaries included since early on.
Chicago, USA
Pantheon Ventures
A four-decade-old London manager active in secondaries alongside infrastructure and primary investing.
London, UK
Marketplace & platform
Technology-driven marketplaces that match buyers and sellers of private shares and standardize the paperwork. They intermediate transactions; they are not themselves buyers of the positions they list.
Forge Global
One of the best-known private-share marketplaces, now owned by one of the largest US brokerages.
San Francisco, USA
EquityZen
A marketplace that structures individual company positions into single-company funds for smaller buyers.
New York, USA
Nasdaq Private Market
The exchange operator's own venture into private-share liquidity, built around company-organized events.
New York, USA
Hiive
A newer entrant deliberately built for smaller trades that larger marketplaces' minimums exclude.
Vancouver, Canada
New to these terms? See the glossary for what LP-led, GP-led, and direct secondaries mean, or how a deal actually works step by step.