Private Equity Spotlight

Over the past year, LP appetite for private equity has shifted noticeably. Private Equity International’s latest LP Perspectives Study revealed that 38 percent of respondents plan to invest more in private equity in 2026, which is down from 45 percent in 2025. Meanwhile, 12 percent plan to invest less, up from 7 percent the prior year. What is driving this change? To unpack the data, PEI Group senior content producer Evie Rusman is joined by Hong Kong bureau chief Alex Lynn and senior research manager Evie Taylor to analyse the findings and discuss how these trends are shaping LP sentiment towards private equity. This is the first episode in PEI’s new miniseries Data Dive, where we'll dig into PEI's proprietary data, surveys and rankings, as well as recent market data sets, to understand what investors and fund managers are thinking, where capital is moving and how the asset class is evolving. Stay tuned for the next episode, which will provide insight into affiliate title Secondaries Investor’s inaugural global survey of the secondaries market.

Have expectations for private equity changed? What’s the role of the asset class in the portfolio these days? These are the questions that Dale Burgess, executive managing director for equities at Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, and David Nowak, president of private equity firm Brookfield, tackle in the second episode of PEI Group's new Commitment Issues podcast miniseries. As the industry works through a backlog of unrealised assets, questions have arisen about performance, asset valuations and firms’ ability to acquire and sell companies in the time frame LPs have come to expect. For instance, average investment hold periods in private equity have now risen to around seven years, according to data from Bain & Company. Performance has to be even greater to achieve the same types of returns that private equity generated in past eras of cheaper debt. As Burgess and Nowak explore, this can present a significant challenge for some firms, while for others – particularly where operational improvement is an established part of the toolkit – the game hasn’t really changed.

In the first episode of PEI Group’s new Commitment Issues podcast, Yangge Seaman of the Children’s Health System of Texas spoke with Hg Capital co-CEO Steven Batchelor about the slow pace of exits and the rise of alternative forms of liquidity that some GPs are using to boost distributions. While exit activity and overall deal activity appear to be picking up this year, as a percentage of total net asset value, distributions are hovering around 11 percent. That’s a similar level of activity to that seen around the global financial crisis, and well below the 20 percent or more associated with more robust years. Seaman talked about what she is looking for when it comes to exit activity among the GPs in her portfolio, and Batchelor gave insight into how Hg approaches exit activity, including its use of a realisation committee to ensure the firm maintains a focus on selling companies. The two also discussed best practices around secondary sales as LPs look for liquidity. Seaman and Batchelor also talked about the evolving LP-GP relationship, and ways both sides can ensure strong partnership through cycles.

Private Funds CFO's 23rd annual New York Forum gathered together nearly 600 compliance, financial and operational experts in two days of discussions that covered everything from AI to new ways to think about carry. In this episode of Private Equity Spotlight, PEI Group editor Graeme Kerr chats with Private Funds CFO’s Graham Bippart, Rob Kotecki and Bill Myers to get their top takeaways from one of the world’s biggest events for CFOs. In this episode: Graham Bippart is senior editor of Buyouts and Private Funds CFO Rob Kotecki is deputy editor of Private Funds CFO Bill Myers is Washington correspondent for Private Funds CFO Graeme Kerr is an editor at PEI Group

Join senior editor Adam Le, Hong Kong Bureau Chief Alex Lynn and America's correspondent Hannah Zhang in our end of year Private Equity Spotlight episode looking back at the biggest trends in the PE market in 2025. From tariffs to trade wars, semi-liquid funds to the 401(k) opportunity and the resurgence of China, our editorial team dissects how LPs and GPs navigated various challenges and which developments are likely to spill over into 2026.

In this episode, senior reporter Carmela Mendoza sits down with Sabina Comis, global managing partner, and Kenneth Young, a partner and co-chair of the corporate and securities practice at Dechert, to unpack key findings from the law firm's 2026 Global Private Equity Outlook. The survey results, gathered from 100 senior-level executives at global PE firms with at least $2.5 billion in AUM, highlight creative deal structures and the importance of distributions for LPs. The results provide insight into where the asset class may be heading in the next 12 months. The discussion centres on the gradual thawing of traditional exit channels. The pair outline the most promising opportunities for capital deployment in 2026. The episode also explores why more GPs plan to make management stake divestitures in the next 24 months and the regional differences behind them; how capital pools are developing to keep companies private for longer; and why future product design of semi-liquid funds could address concerns around valuations.

This episode is sponsored by Lexington Partners, LGT Capital Partners and Davis Polk and first appeared on Secondaries Investor's Second Thoughts podcast. In 2024, GP-led deals hit a record of $71 billion in transaction volume, accounting for 44 percent of the total secondaries market volume of $160 billion, according to Evercore’s FY 2024 Secondary Market Review. This is significant and marks the increasing popularity of continuation vehicles as an exit route. In this episode, Secondaries Investor senior editor Adam Le is joined by Lexington Partners’ Jeffrey Bloom, LGT Capital Partners’ Brooke Zhou and Davis Polk’s Leor Landa. The trio explore how GP-led transactions have rapidly grown into a mainstream liquidity and portfolio-management tool, against a backdrop of constrained exit markets, rising LP demand for liquidity and increasing GP comfort with continuation vehicles. They also examine market dynamics across deal sizes, noting the challenges of scaling mega single-asset vehicles and the significant untapped opportunity in the mid-market, where many GPs are still early in their GP-led journeys. Brooke Zhou is a partner at LGT Capital Partners in Hong Kong, an investment committee member, and is responsible for origination, due diligence, execution and monitoring of Asian primary and secondary investments Jeffrey Bloom is a partner on the secondaries team at Lexington Partners focused on the origination, evaluation and execution of continuation vehicle transactions Leor Landa is a partner and head of investment management at Davis Polk Adam Le is senior editor, EMEA, Private Equity Group, at PEI Group

This episode is sponsored by Manulife Investment Management and first appeared on The PERE Podcast As new industries evolve and accelerate, new opportunities are constantly arising for institutional investors in the private real assets space. It isn’t always easy, however, for managers to grasp hold of these opportunities. As assets like data centers have become investable in recent years, managers have found that they need to devote time and effort to understand the dynamics around these unfamiliar assets. And the private markets industry has occasionally been guilty of obsessing over which labels to apply to emerging assets. This is the first episode of our Private Markets 2030 podcast miniseries, part of PEI Group’s wider initiative exploring how private markets are evolving as we enter the decade’s second half. Across the series, we unpack how managers can adapt, attract capital and deliver performance in an increasingly complex market. Joining us are three guests from Manulife Investment Management: Erin Patterson, global co-head of research and strategy; Maggie Coleman, the firm’s chief investment officer for real estate equity and co-head of global portfolio management; and John Anderson, global head of corporate finance and infrastructure. They discuss how multi-product managers have an advantage in expanding into new opportunity sets and argue that a multi-product approach offers obvious benefits around diversification, while allowing managers the flexibility to pivot into new opportunity sets.