Chris Witkowsky

Pricing for secondaries has improved to a net-asset-value level of around 90% for buyout funds.

The single-asset deal is among a slew of mid-market transactions that are keeping secondaries buyers busy, despite a slowdown earlier in the year on the GP-led side.

Strategic Partners, formed in 2000, has grown rapidly since its acquisition by Blackstone into one of the largest secondaries buyers in the market.

The rationale for the deal is to provide liquidity to investors in older funds while still holding the assets.

The Harvest process allowed LPs in the firm’s seventh and eighth funds to sell their stakes at relatively high prices compared to other recent deals.

Alex Mejia is joining Baird less than 18 months after joining Goldman to advise on single- and double-asset GP-led deals.

The deal was to be priced off the sale of a minority stake software business Medius to Advent but was negotiated down in line with falling public markets.

Private equity performance has held relatively steady compared with the pain in the public markets so far this year. That may start changing over the new few weeks.

Clearlake is among a host of firms exploring building out or bolting on secondaries platforms.

The deal totalled somewhere in the range of $2bn to $2.5bn, making it one of the largest deals of the year.