Lexington Partners (Franklin Lexington)

Lexington Partners built its reputation as one of the earliest independent firms dedicated entirely to buying private equity fund stakes, growing over roughly three decades into one of the largest secondaries managers by capital raised.

Franklin Templeton acquired Lexington in a deal completed in 2022 for approximately $1.75 billion, folding it into Franklin Templeton's alternatives business as its dedicated secondaries platform — now marketed under the Franklin Lexington brand.

The combination has scaled quickly: within its first year under the Franklin brand, the secondaries strategy exceeded $3.5 billion in additional AUM raised globally, and Lexington's latest flagship secondary fund, Lexington X, closed at $22 billion — among the largest dedicated secondary funds ever raised.

Lexington buys LP stakes across private equity and, distinctively, has a long-established co-investment practice alongside its secondaries business. Its transactions span the full size range up to the largest institutional portfolio sales, and it participates in GP-led continuation vehicles as well as classic LP-led purchases.

The firm's position inside Franklin Templeton also illustrates a market-wide shift worth understanding: traditional asset managers have been acquiring or building secondaries capability specifically to package private-markets exposure for wealth channels. When you read that a listed manager has 'entered secondaries', this is usually the mechanism.

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.

This site groups buyers into four categories, because the category tells you more about how a firm behaves than its size does. See the rest of theplatform within a diversified managergroup in the directory.