CalSTRS' private equity team has taken the cash rather than roll into continuation vehicles, its consultant tells Wednesday's investment committee. The program sits at 15% of a $415 billion fund against a 14% target. The week opens in London, where Informa's secondaries summit puts two UK pension pools on stage, and ends in Singapore. The longer read is Meketa's report itself, because it says what the largest US teacher pension does when a GP offers a roll.

CalSTRS sells its share of every continuation vehicle

Meketa's report for Wednesday says in one line what CalSTRS does when a sponsor offers it a continuation vehicle. "To date, the PE Team has generally elected liquidity rather than rolling exposure in CVs and has seen increasing GP adherence to ILPA guidance on CVs." So a pension with $58.7 billion of private equity is a seller by default in every GP-led it is offered. Roll rates like Gainline's fewer than one in twenty come from investors of this size making the same election.

The pension takes the cash because it does not need the exposure. Private equity is 15.0% of the total fund against a long-term target of 14%, down from 15.4% six months earlier. NAV was flat at $58.7 billion over the six months to March, because distributions outpaced contributions, and the book has been cash-flow positive for ten quarters. Meanwhile staff signed 25 commitments for $3.5 billion in the first half. The appendix lists Francisco Partners VIII, Permira IX, Apollo XI, Lone Star XIII, twelve co-investments and no secondaries fund. So CalSTRS is neither a seller of fund interests nor a buyer of secondaries funds this year, though it sells its share of every continuation vehicle.

Source: Meketa Investment Group, Semi-Annual Private Equity Executive Summary for the CalSTRS Investment Committee, 23 September 2026, p.6, from Preqin data.

The chart above explains why the rest of the market is not in CalSTRS' position. Buyout funds distributed about 16% of NAV in 2025, annualized to September, against about 30% in 2015, 2017 and 2021, and venture funds about 6%. An investor whose funds return a sixth of their value a year has no cash to re-up with, so it sells fund interests or takes the cash in a vehicle. Meketa names the public pensions that cut their private equity targets in 2025: Washington, Maine, Nevada, Ohio and Alaska. The deck opens on a slide titled "Illiquidity is More Expensive Today". Its second bullet is the sentence a secondary buyer has waited to read in a consultant's book. "Asset allocators question the adequacy of historical 'illiquidity premiums'."

Since Friday

• iCapital filed on Friday for an access fund carrying the name of IEQ Capital, the California wealth manager, into Blackstone's Strategic Partners Real Estate IX, the fund whose own filing this letter carried on Friday. Nothing has been raised yet.
• HarbourVest Global Private Equity said on 16 September that its $400 million tender offer will go to shareholders in November at about 10% below the 30 September NAV. The timetable is due in October. The listed fund of funds sold $70.7 million of co-investments in July, after $300 million of fund interests in December, to pay for it.
• LP investment committees now put asset quality and alignment first when a continuation vehicle election lands. Secondaries Investor reported it on Friday from an IPEM panel.
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On the radar, the week of 21 September

• Tuesday 22 September, London. Informa's Global Secondaries Summit takes single-asset GP-leds at 10:10, multi-asset at 14:20, an LP panel at 15:00 and credit at 16:15. The speakers include Pantheon's Amyn Hassanally, Ardian's Marie-Victoire Rozé and ICG's Vivien Blossier, with LGPS Central and Railpen on the LP side. Flexstone's Kristof Van Overloop speaks eighteen days after his firm bought Glouston.
• Wednesday 23 September, West Sacramento. The CalSTRS Investment Committee meets at 9:00 and gives Meketa ten minutes for the private equity report read above, before "investment decisions" in closed session.
• Monday 28 September. Responses are due to CrossBoundary's call for a manager of a pan-African secondary fund of $100 million to $200 million, designed by GIZ's ICAMA initiative. The taskforce prefers a GP-led mandate, because development finance institutions dominate the African LP base.
• Monday 28 September to Thursday 1 October, Singapore. SuperReturn Asia has one secondaries session, on Tuesday at 12:25, with Adams Street's Pinal Nicum and AltamarCAM's Derek Snyder among the speakers.
• Tuesday 29 and Wednesday 30 September, New York. ILPA's Continuation Vehicles for the Limited Partner course meets on Tuesday, and Wednesday is quarter-end. HarbourVest Global Private Equity prices its tender off the 30 September NAV, and Anthropic's prospectus is due by the end of the month, BeBeez reported on Friday.
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