PE’s $285B Add-On Wave Meets GP-Led Shift

Good morning, ! This week we're exploring how GP-led secondaries are reshaping private equity, Advent secures cash with a €4.1B exit, Global PE add-ons marked $285B YTD, and the North America holding period outpaces global averages since 2000.

Want to advertise in PE 150? Check out our self-serve ad platform, here.

Know someone who would love this? Pass it along—they’ll thank you later! Here’s the link.

DATA DIVE

The $48B Signal

The GP-led secondaries market is no longer a niche—it’s a $48 billion force in just H1 2025, up from $31B last year. What was once a liquidity outlet for LPs has become a strategic lever for GPs: continuation funds to hold onto winners, tender offers to refresh LP bases, and bespoke structures to pull in fresh capital. The middle market remains the sweet spot—77% of continuation volume tied to companies with $20–250M EBITDA. And investors are showing confidence: 87% of single-asset deals priced at 90%+ of NAV, with more than half clearing at par. Bottom line: GP-leds are now central to portfolio management, not just an afterthought.

Read the Full Report HERE

TREND OF THE WEEK

The Bolt-On Plateau

After peaking at $755B in 2021, global private equity add-on and bolt-on deal value has been in a slow descent—despite the strategy’s popularity. KPMG data shows deal value fell to $628B in 2022, $519B in 2023, and is projected to hit just $285B in 2025 (annualized from H1 data).

For context, bolt-ons now account for more than 70% of buyout activity. But the overall decline in deal value suggests that smaller, tuck-in acquisitions aren’t fully offsetting the broader slowdown in platform deals.

Why the dip? GPs are facing multiple compression, higher debt costs, and longer hold periods. Many are still leaning on add-ons to drive growth—but they’re doing so with smaller checks and tighter diligence.

Why it matters: The bolt-on machine hasn’t broken, but it’s no longer accelerating. For GPs betting on consolidation plays, the message is clear: value creation will need to come more from integration than expansion. (More)

PRESENTED BY PACASO

Final Chance to Join Proven Investors in This $1.3T Market

Tomorrow is the final day to join the VCs behind Uber, Venmo, and eBay as a Pacaso investor. Founded by a former Zillow exec, Pacaso has earned $110M+ in gross profit in under 5 years by revolutionizing the $1.3T vacation home market. They even reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO. Don’t miss your chance.

Invest by Tomorrow

This is a paid advertisement for Pacaso's Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving the ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the Nasdaq is subject to approvals.

LIQUIDITY CORNER

Liquidity, Without the Exit

Private equity liquidity isn’t broken—just rerouted. With exits stalled (3.14 new deals per exit), GPs are leaning on continuation funds, carveouts, and take-privates to buy time. But the real plot twist? Limited partners—once allergic to secondaries—are now stampeding toward them. In 2024, LP-led secondaries hit $87B, with 40% coming from first-time sellers. Yale and NYC’s pension plan paved the way, and peer pressure is doing the rest. Dry powder remains high, but at just 28.2% of AUM, it’s losing weight. In this environment, liquidity is a toolkit, not a timeline. Firms that can’t offer creative exits risk becoming portfolio prisons. (More)

DEAL OF THE WEEK

GTCR Prescribes €4.1B for Zentiva

Advent International just inked a €4.1 billion deal to sell Zentiva, the Prague-based generic drugmaker, to GTCR. It’s a tidy exit—Advent carved out the business from Sanofi in 2018 for €1.9B and doubled its value in seven years. Zentiva, which supplies painkillers like paracetamol to over 100M patients, now operates in 35 countries with ambitions to serve one in five Europeans. The sale marks the second major PE generics deal in Europe this year, following CapVest’s €10B acquisition of Stada. With $198B in healthcare deals globally so far in 2025, PE’s appetite for generics, drugmakers, and life sciences looks far from cured. (More)

TOGETHER WITH ENTERPRET

How Canva, Perplexity and Notion turn feedback chaos into actionable customer intelligence

You’re sitting on a goldmine of feedback: tickets, surveys, reviews, but can’t mine it.

Manual tagging doesn’t scale, and insights fall through the cracks.

Enterpret’s AI unifies all feedback, auto‑tags themes, and ties them to revenue/CSAT, surfacing what matters to customers.

The result: faster decisions, clearer priorities, and stronger retention.

👉 See how top teams do it

PRIVATE CREDIT

Private Credit’s Power Play

Private Credit is no longer the quirky cousin at the financing family reunion. It’s the main event. Sponsors are leaning hardest on Business Services (93%), Software & Tech (83%), and Healthcare (76%)—industries already pumping out deal flow. But the real intrigue is in the comeback kids: Financial Services (71%) and Manufacturing (63%), where lenders are plugging gaps left by banks and financing everything from automation upgrades to fintech scaling. Even “unloved” sectors—Transportation (53%), Education (42%), Consumer/Retail (32%)—are now squarely on private credit’s radar. The bottom line: as traditional lenders retreat, direct lenders are proving indispensable. (More)

MICROSURVEY

Edge Cases: What Really Wins in Sourcing?

There’s no single playbook for deal sourcing anymore—just ask the 130 professionals in our latest PE150 micro-survey. 29% said relationships are their biggest edge (especially in corp dev, where founders still crave strategic alignment). But in this market, being fast and decisive (25%) is closing just as many deals—bankers in particular are making speed their brand. Tech tools and AI are rising too, with consultants betting big on data to unlock hidden gems. Meanwhile, brand and specialization each drew 15%, proving that credibility and thematic focus still carry weight, especially for PE sponsors. Bottom line: sourcing edges are fragmenting, and the firms that flex multiple muscles will be best positioned to compete. (More)

MACROVIEW

Not Hiring, Not Firing (Yet)

Turns out, America didn’t hire as many people as we thought. The Bureau of Labor Statistics quietly revised job gains down by 911k. While headline unemployment remains tame at 4.3%, the real story is in the payroll momentum collapse—and it’s not pretty. June job numbers fell outright, and July/August were well below forecasts.

Firms are in a “low hire, low fire” holding pattern: no aggressive expansion, but no mass layoffs either. Immigration curbs are tightening labor supply, dragging GDP growth and redefining breakeven job creation. In the short term, AI investment props up GDP. But if SMB layoffs start this fall, recession watch goes from “meh” to “uh-oh.” (More)

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY

When Sterling Broke Free

On September 21, 1931, Great Britain officially abandoned the gold standard, severing the pound’s link to gold and ending nearly a century of monetary orthodoxy. Facing a brutal deflationary spiral, capital flight, and an overvalued currency, the UK had little choice but to let sterling float.

The move was seen at the time as economic heresy—but it worked. The pound devalued by ~25%, exports surged, and the British economy began recovering faster than its gold-clinging peers.

Why it matters for PE: The episode is a stark reminder that currency regimes shape capital flows and risk appetite. In 1931, devaluation restored growth by forcing a policy pivot. Today, floating currencies, capital controls, and FX hedging remain crucial dimensions of cross-border investing—especially in volatile markets.

For investors operating globally, the lessons from 1931 still echo: don’t fight monetary gravity—and never ignore the politics behind the peg. (More)

INTERESTING ARTICLES

TWEET OF THE WEEK

"Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit."

Conrad Hilton