Partners Group has moved its gated evergreen fund's stakes in four buyout funds into a new vehicle, UK notices show, before shareholders vote on the fund's split. The evergreen funds of seven houses, meanwhile, hold Stone Point's continuation fund, most of it bought by its two lead buyers. In addition, Evercore made Nigel Dawn, who built its secondaries advisory business, co-president on Sunday.

The tape

• DEAL  Drake Aurora Fund sold its whole stake in ASF VIII, Ardian's eighth secondaries fund, to StepStone, a notice of Friday shows, price not published.
• DEAL  Blackstone's Strategic Partners bought into 11 of 36 UK fund partnerships that changed hands at the quarter-end, Gazette notices of 5 to 16 October show.
• LP  MIT carried $53.1 million of private holdings at market transaction prices at 30 June, its report says, the mark of a stake with a bid.
• PEOPLE  GI Partners' chief Travis Pearson left after a year, and the $49 billion firm has put off its seventh fund to 2027, PitchBook reported Friday.
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Partners Group moved four stakes before the vote

Partners Group has started to sort its gated evergreen fund's book by vintage, before shareholders vote on splitting the fund in two. The €6.6 billion evergreen, Global Value SICAV, moved its stakes in four buyout funds of 2016 to 2018 into a new Luxembourg vehicle, Partners Group GVD Access. The four stakes moved under notices in The Gazette published between 6 and 14 October.

Source: The Gazette, statements by general partner, 6 to 14 October 2026; each house's own closing announcement, linked on the fund.

The split is the firm's answer to a queue. The queue opened in the second quarter: investors asked back 9.8% of the fund's net assets and were paid 5%, the cap, as read here on 19 July. Third-quarter requests hit the cap again, Bloomberg reported through Swissinfo on 7 October.

Investors asked back almost twice what the fund paid out in the second quarter

Global Value SICAV, redemption requests and payments, % of net assets, second quarter of 2026

On 2 October Partners Group proposed to split the fund in two. The split would create a distributing fund, which holds the older stakes and sells them to pay those who want out, and a compounding fund for the new money. The split needs a shareholder vote, for which no date has been given.

The four stakes fit the distributing fund's description, and the new vehicle's name reads like it. However, the notices do not say what GVD Access is for, and they show only the fund's UK partnerships, a small part of its book. So nothing about GVD Access is official yet.

If shareholders approve, a gated evergreen becomes a seller of fund stakes to pay its queue. Buyers already price such stakes: Jefferies put buyout fund stakes at 91% of net asset value in the first half. And stakes in one of the four already trade: CVC Secondary Partners took 75% of AlpInvest's stake in BC Partners' tenth fund, a notice of 7 October shows.

Seven houses' evergreens share Stone Point's CV

Stone Point's continuation fund sits in the evergreen funds of seven houses, and most of the money came from its two lead buyers. The two lead buyers were AlpInvest and Ardian, which anchored the vehicle of some $3 billion for eight companies with Evercore advising, Mergermarket reported in October 2025. Their evergreens bought $191.5 million of it that month, four-fifths of the cost recorded in the seven houses' annual reports, most of them to 31 March.

Source: the funds' annual reports (N-CSR), schedules of investments at 31 March 2026, filed 2 to 9 June (AlpInvest, Ardian, StepStone, Coller); Aksia's at 30 June, filed 3 September. The evergreens bought on 13 and 29 October 2025.

The lead buyers' evergreens also mark their share up. AlpInvest's main evergreen carried its $116.5 million at $131.5 million at 31 March, 13% above cost five months after buying. All the holdings that give a cost stood 9% above it.

Those holdings make Stone Point's the most shared continuation fund in the evergreens' books. Of the 48 that the evergreens bought in the year to their reports, for $1.76 billion, 13 sit with two houses or more, Vistria's Agua vehicle with five.

So the two lead buyers placed part of their ticket in their own evergreens, which raise money every month and must invest it. Their next marks come with the semi-annual reports to 30 September, due by early December.

Evercore made its secondaries chief co-president

Evercore has appointed Nigel Dawn, who built its secondaries advisory business, as co-president of the bank from 1 January, it said on Sunday. He shares the title with Naveen Nataraj, an investment banker, and both will report to John Weinberg, who stays chairman and chief executive for at least three more years. Both appointments were reported first by the Financial Times, which says the firm has never had presidents before.

Evercore is the New York advisory bank that Roger Altman founded in 1995. Dawn joined it in 2013 from UBS, where he co-headed the private funds group, to set up the Private Capital Advisory unit with Nicolas Lanel. That unit now has teams in New York, London and Singapore, and its own review calls it "the world's leading secondaries advisory business". The same review counted a record $121 billion of secondary deals in the first half of 2026, $65 billion of them GP-led. In August Dawn told Bloomberg that the year was on track for $250 billion. This month the unit advised Blackstone on its $1 billion credit continuation fund, as read here on 9 October. Last year it advised Stone Point on the continuation fund read above.

The market Dawn's unit counts has doubled since 2023, to $226 billion

Secondary deal volume by year and by first half, $bn, LP-led and GP-led

Source: Evercore, H1 2026 Secondary Market Review, p.3, July 2026.

Dawn becomes chairman of the unit and will "remain closely connected to the business and its clients", the release says. In the same reshuffle, Daniel Mendelow becomes sole head of US investment banking and Jason Sobol its chairman. Altman explained the reshuffle in the release: "Evercore is a different firm today, even compared with three years ago. It is much larger, broader and more global, and is competitively stronger."

The first call under the new structure comes on Wednesday 28 October, when Evercore reports its third quarter at 8am New York time. That call will be the first chance to ask who runs the unit day to day from January, because the release does not say.

On the radar

• Tuesday 20 October, after the close, then Thursday 22 October, New York. SpaceX posts its third-quarter results on Tuesday, with a webcast at 4.30pm. Two trading days later, up to 1.3 billion shares, 28% of the lock-up and its largest tranche, become sellable under page 259 of its prospectus.
• Thursday 22 October, 9am, New York, and London. Blackstone holds its third-quarter call, the first since it shelved Project Eclipse on 24 September. The same day HarbourVest Global Private Equity publishes its half-year results to 31 July, the first since Saba Capital reached 11.1% of its shares.
• Friday 23 October, 1pm, London. Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust holds its annual meeting, where Saba Capital asks for three board seats against the advice of Glass Lewis, ISS and PIRC. Proxies are due on Wednesday at 1pm. The same day Cox Capital's offer for Blue Owl Credit Income shares opens at $7.31, 20% below the 31 August value.
• Tuesday 17 and Wednesday 18 November, New York. SuperReturn Secondaries North America meets at Convene on Madison Avenue, with Coller, HarbourVest, Adams Street, Kline Hill and New York State Common on stage. The Secondary Brief has negotiated 15% off for its readers: book with the discount link, or use the VIP code FKR3675SECBRIEF.
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