New 2ND Capital led the single-asset continuation fund that keeps Certares in Guardian Alarm, Certares said on Tuesday. Its two vehicles had raised $307 million from 17 investors before the announcement. Growth Catalyst Partners, meanwhile, filed for an annex fund, and Brown named a successor to the chief investment officer who defended her peers' secondary sales. So a nine-year hold now ends in a vehicle with a queue of buyers, and the advisor's own survey says why.

The tape

• Certares closed a single-asset continuation fund for Guardian Alarm on Tuesday, led by New 2ND Capital and advised by William Blair. Existing shareholders were offered cash.
• Minnesota's State Board of Investment committed $250 million to Blackstone's Strategic Partners X in the second quarter, its book of 10 September shows. The same book calls private markets underweight after $1.7 billion of distributions to 30 June.
• Brown University named Joshua Kennedy chief investment officer from December, Chief Investment Officer reported on Tuesday. Jane Dietze leaves an $8 billion endowment that held 36% in private equity at 31 December.
• Constitution Capital named Rich Schainker, from WTW, managing director on 18 September to sell its Horizon collective investment trust. Horizon launched on 1 September with more than $50 million from 18 retirement plans.
• ICG's Benoît Durteste said in an interview republished on 11 September that Strategic Equity "could have invested our latest fund, closed at $11 billion, in under a year". The firm turns down "the majority of the deals we see".
• Andreessen Horowitz's Jen Kha wrote on 11 September that the firm offered its investors liquidity on its Stripe and Databricks positions and that "not a single LP chose to sell".
• Growth Catalyst Partners, the Chicago mid-market firm, filed on Tuesday for GCP Annex Fund II, of indefinite size with nothing raised yet.
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Certares kept Guardian Alarm with New 2ND's money

Certares has kept Guardian Alarm for a tenth year by bringing in New 2ND Capital as lead investor of a single-asset continuation fund, the firm said on Tuesday. The vehicle gave Guardian's existing shareholders an option to take cash, and it added committed capital for acquisitions. William Blair advised Certares and the company, which Certares bought in March 2017 with Vanwall Holdings as its first deal outside travel and hospitality. Guardian was founded in 1930 and serves more than ten states across the Midwest and the South. So the new money funds a buyer of smaller alarm companies rather than a repair.

The filing says how much came in before the announcement. The vehicle this letter read on Saturday as most probably a continuation fund is that fund. Guardian Alarm CV and Guardian Alarm CV 2 filed with the SEC on Friday from Certares' address, with William Blair placing them. The first had raised $187.4 million from ten investors since 4 September, and the second $119.9 million from seven. The release gives no size, no price and no roll rate, so $307.3 million from 17 investors is the only number on the deal.

New 2ND is buying with a fund it has just switched on. The New York firm leads GP-led deals in North American mid-market companies and had $2.6 billion of regulatory assets at the end of 2025. Its fourth fund targets $1.25 billion and "has recently been activated and has closed on its first deal", Secondaries Investor reported on 13 August. The third fund had raised $281.9 million from 133 investors onshore and $426 million from 86 through an offshore feeder by December 2024. In January the firm led Boyne Capital's vehicle for Pilot Energy, with William Blair advising there too.

Source: William Blair, 2026 Secondary Market Report and Survey, p.4.

William Blair's own survey prices the kind of deal it advised. Its 2026 report counts single-asset continuation funds at $60 billion in 2025, up from $34 billion. It finds that 48% of them priced at net asset value or above, down from 55% in 2024, because deal sizes grew. So a sponsor with a nine-year-old company of Guardian's size sells to lead buyers who are raising larger funds and pay close to the mark. The cash option is therefore offered rather than argued over. The report puts the floor in one sentence: "over 90% of single-asset deals were completed at 90% or higher of NAV".

Source: William Blair, 2026 Secondary Market Report and Survey, p.5, Exhibit 7.

Growth Catalyst wants more money for its 2021 fund

Growth Catalyst Partners has started raising an annex fund, and the name says which fund it serves. GCP Annex Fund II filed with the SEC on Tuesday from the firm's West Adams Street office in Chicago. It is of indefinite size, with nothing raised yet and no placement agent, and its officers are the founders Jim TenBroek and Scott Peters. An annex fund raises follow-on money for companies a fund already owns once the fund's reserves are spent. The investors are usually the fund's own backers, and a secondaries buyer steps in when they decline.

Growth Catalyst was founded in 2017 by executives from Wind Point Partners and The Jordan Company, PE Hub reported at the time. It buys marketing, information and business-services companies. Its second fund filed in August 2021 with a $200 million target, and its third had raised $353.2 million from 47 investors by August 2024. The new vehicle is most probably the annex to Fund II, five years into that fund's life, though it could also be a second annex fund across the whole portfolio. Nothing has been announced officially yet.

Brown changes CIO after defending endowment sales

Brown University will change the head of its $8 billion endowment in December, a year after its annual report defended the secondary sales its peers made. Jane Dietze, chief investment officer for eight years, leaves at the end of 2026 for the Fund for Science and Technology, reported Chief Investment Officer on Tuesday. Her deputy Joshua Kennedy takes over. Private equity was 36% of the endowment at 31 December, and the fund has grown from $3.2 billion in ten years.

Her report for the year to June 2025 took the sellers' side. It says the sales by "some of Private Equity's earliest and most aggressive backers" were "widely interpreted as an indicator of either frustration or desperation". They are "better understood as a marker of the increasing maturity of the secondary market for Private Equity fund interests", it adds. The successor therefore inherits the allocation and the view. The report's last word on the sellers is that endowments "frequently hold some of the highest-quality funds and have found willing buyers".

On the radar

• Wednesday 23 September, West Sacramento. The CalSTRS Investment Committee meets at 9:00 and takes Meketa's private equity report, read here on Sunday, then an investment decision in closed session.
• Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 September, Singapore. DealStreetAsia's Asia PE-VC Summit runs its LP liquidity panel today at 14:55 with TPG NewQuest, Schroders Capital and Aquilius, a week after KAUST's and KIC's sales became public.
• Monday 28 September to Thursday 1 October, Singapore. SuperReturn Asia has its secondaries session on the Tuesday at 12:25.
• Tuesday 29 September, New York. ILPA's Continuation Vehicles for the Limited Partner course meets the day before the quarter-end mark every autumn sale is priced on.
• Wednesday 30 September, 1pm, Guernsey. The deadline for Partners Group Private Equity's shareholders to elect realisation shares. The EGM follows on 7 October.
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