The rise of the secondaries market – Moelis & Company’s Jeff Hammer and Paul Sanabria with Tom Cane

“For the last three years, did you know -- that the secondary market’s been larger than the IPO market in terms of transaction volume?” that’s what Moelis & Company Managing Director Paul Sanabria said to showcase the immensely increased popularity of secondaries over the last couple of decades. The secondaries market of the 1970s looked quite different than it does today, originating then as an opportunistic solution for LP liquidity, with some of its early pioneers including VCFA, Landmark and Coller.

In this week’s Dealcast, Tom Cane, Mergermarket’s funds editor is joined by Jeff Hammer and Paul Sanabria, Managing Directors at Moelis & Company’s private capital advisory group, where they help lead the firm’s global secondaries practice. They discuss how a niche, opportunistic corner of private markets has transformed into a sophisticated, multi‑strategy global capital market exceeding USD 220bn in annual volumes.

The discussion charts the secondaries market journey from early LP‑driven trades, through the GP‑led restructurings of the 2010s, to today’s GP‑led “2.0” landscape defined by trophy assets, direct‑sponsor strategies, and a surge of new capital sources.

The podcast also explores which direct sponsors are launching secondaries strategies like New Mountain and Warburg Pincus, as well as the traditional asset managers, like Blackstone, that are joining in.

With answers to questions like: how does one define trophy assets? Are GP‑leds becoming standard exit paths alongside M&A and IPO? What could the next decade look like for secondaries?

This episode is not one to miss.