Fund Shack Private Equity Podcast

The episode packs in several genuinely useful non-obvious data points and observations - 50% CV failure rate industry-wide, Evercore's 90%+ success rate, the secondary market being only 2% of outstanding NAV, and the counterintuitive point that CVs may actually be less conflicted than sponsor-to-sponsor or fund-to-fund transactions. However, there is meaningful padding around culture, talent retention platitudes, and geographic breakdown that dilutes the density.

“to success of transactions brought to the market is about 50%. So 50% fail”

“secondary market is 2% of the NAV. That's outstanding in private markets”

The most original moment is the reframing of CVs as potentially less conflicted than the alternatives (sponsor-to-sponsor, fund-to-fund) and the value-vs-price distinction as it applies to NAV squeezing. However, most of the content is fairly standard secondaries market education that circulates in industry publications, and the contrarian angles are not pushed particularly far.

“another conflicted transaction is when a sponsor may use their new vintage fund to purchase an asset from one of their old vintage funds. So a situation like that, typically there's a conflict on either side and typically there's no market process”

“the market's pretty smart and they did understand the value. It's just not where you're holding it. It's Below”

Nigel Dawn is global head of the largest secondaries advisory business in the world, with over 20 years of genuine deal experience including doing his first continuation vehicle in 2005 before the terminology even existed. He speaks from direct transaction experience rather than as a commentator, and his firm's claimed 50% market share and 90%+ CV success rate are credible indicators of practitioner depth.

“I did my first continuation vehicle, I think in 2005. For a Spanish group”

“when I started, like I've been advising here over 20 years, I mean, when I started the secondary market was 6 billion”

The episode includes a solid volume of named metrics: $6B to $225B market growth, 2% of NAV, ~50% market share, 50% failure rate vs 90%+ for Evercore, 10-15% retail capital, firm headcount growth from 9 to 170-180, and Asia at 2% of secondaries. The weakness is that some of the most important claims - like private credit portfolio quality and future growth projections - remain asserted rather than evidenced.

“we're about 50% market share in what we think about the LP secondary market”

“probably 10 to 15% of the capital in the secondary market is from these retail vehicles”

The host introduces genuinely useful friction on a few points - NAV squeezing legitimacy, regulatory scrutiny, and the 'kicking the can' media narrative - and follows up meaningfully on CV failure rates. However, many questions are open-ended preambles and the host rarely challenges specific numerical claims or probes contradictions, leaving several interesting tensions (e.g. how Evercore's 90%+ success rate is validated) unexplored.

“A 50% failure rate sounds very high to me and it sounds like one tactical thing you really shouldn't do is try and take something to market first”

“I've come across this phenomenon of nav squeezing where, whereby the secondaries are put into um, the semi liquid evergreens and they're bought, I think it's at a discount but immediately marked up to the manager's nav”