Christopher Witkowsky

The secondaries firm will carefully select opportunities in the market, which has seen increasing volume, says Newbury director Justin Pollack.

The $3bn fundraising total includes a $300m separate account with the Ohio Public Employees’ Retirement System.

Family offices are expected to help boost secondaries dealflow in the last months of 2010, as many seek to replace existing LP stakes with emerging market exposure.

The $27.4bn endowment – one of the private equity industry’s most influential LPs – will continue to be an active player on the secondaries market, concentrating on ‘best-in-class’ managers.

PCG Asset Management will help the $34bn pension rebalance its portfolio, selling older investments and ramping up exposure to international, secondaries and co-investments.

The average high bid for partnership interests across all asset classes reached almost 80% of NAV in the first half of 2010, according to data from Cogent Partners.

The UK pension ‘lifeboat’ has hired Goldman Sachs, Pantheon, Hamilton Lane, Lexington, LGT, Partners Group and RREEF as advisors.

The private equity advisor will manage funds that are near the end of their investment cycle, part of a deal also involving Lexington Partners.

Two bellwether mega-funds are trading at or near par on the secondaries market, a big change from 2009, when these stakes were valued nearly 70% beneath GP-assigned values.

The bank’s Alternative Investment Partners team sees opportunities from investors who are trimming portfolios and creating ‘deeper relationships' with fewer GPs.