While many expected trade barriers to put the brakes on secondaries activities, the market defied those concerns and is now on track for another annual record.
Over the past week, two of the top secondaries advisers have reported a record-breaking first half in interim market updates, citing deal volumes exceeding $100 billion. Evercore and Jefferies reported $102 billion and $103 billion in H1 deal activity, respectively, according to reports the firms shared with Secondaries Investor. The first-half volume surpassed most full-year totals from the past decade, Evercore noted.
Secondaries activity has flown in the face of uncertainty, once again offering a liquidity option to cash-strapped private markets participants. While there was brief slowdown in secondaries activity following President Donald Trump’s tariff announcements in April, his move once again dampened private markets exit activity when many were hopeful green shoots were finally emerging.
The persistent slowdown of PE distributions drove secondaries volumes beyond Jefferies’ expectations for first-half activity, Scott Beckelman, global co-head of secondary advisory at Jefferies, told Secondaries Investor. “I don’t think we could have forecast [the deal volume to be] north of $100 billion [for H1].”
April’s events and its reverberations have prompted both GPs and LPs “to take a proactive approach to bringing a lot of that liquidity forward to secondaries”, Beckelman added.
With a strong first half on the books, a record-breaking $200 billion in annual deal volume no longer seems out of reach – especially as the second half has historically been the busier period.
However, there are also headwinds that will prevent the market from going through the roof in the remainder of the year.
While Nigel Dawn, global head of Evercore’s private capital advisory group, can see $100 billion to $120 billion of volume being done in the second half, “the secondary investors have done a lot already – they’re very busy, they’re slightly overwhelmed – so I don’t see it being a big uptick from the first half of the year”, he said.
Record dealmaking activity has led to a decline in dry powder, which stood at $171 billion in the first half of 2025, down from $216 billion recorded at the end of 2024, according to Evercore’s report. This suggests many buyers have already deployed significant capital. Evercore sees signs that buyers are slowing down their pace, stretching out their capital a little more, Dawn explained. Current difficult fundraising market conditions are also playing a part. “Even though this is strategy de jour [in private markets]… people would rather be fundraising next year than this year. It’s just been such a busy first half of the year.”
A $200 billion-plus year for secondaries volume is in reach, which would once again see the market leap over the record it has only just broken. While another shock is detrimental to some in private markets, the secondaries market is working in overdrive to keep up with demand.