Carlyle AlpInvest will pay 94.25% of value for part of Oakley Capital Investments' stakes in five Oakley funds, the listed company said on Wednesday. Its own shares trade 30% below net asset value. Meanwhile, PGIM and LGT Capital Partners co-led a $680 million continuation vehicle for the loans of Tree Line's direct lending funds. In addition, GIC and several secondaries houses have offered 300 billion to 500 billion won each for IMM's Air First fund.

The tape

• DEAL  Cox Capital, whose bids for BCRED shares run to 3 November, offered $15.47 a share for Variant Alternative Income Fund, 40% below NAV.
• DEAL  Hunter Point Capital gave Bow River Capital, a Denver manager of closed-end and evergreen funds, preferred financing of undisclosed size on Wednesday.
• PEOPLE  LGT Capital Partners named Sascha Gruber, who runs its secondaries team, chief executive from 1 January 2027, succeeding Roberto Paganoni, Investment Week reported.
• PEOPLE  Foundation Private Equity, the Singapore GP-led specialist, loses co-founder Jeremy Foo to Invictus Private Equity Asia on 1 November, though he stays a senior adviser.
• PEOPLE  Kirkland & Ellis hired Christian Vareika, a lawyer for pensions, sovereigns and secondary buyers in continuation vehicles, as a partner in Boston on 27 October.
• DATA  DWS will pay only 10% of each redemption order from grundbesitz europa, its €4 billion open-ended property fund, from 28 October, Fundresearch reported.
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AlpInvest pays 94% of value for Oakley stakes

A listed vehicle has found a buyer willing to pay close to par for its fund stakes, when the stock market pays a third less for the same assets. That buyer is Carlyle AlpInvest. It will take part of Oakley Capital Investments' interests in five Oakley funds at 94.25% of their value at 31 March, the company said on Wednesday. Its shares closed at 554 pence the same day, 30% below the net asset value of 791 pence a share at 30 September.

OCI is a closed-ended fund listed in London that invests in the funds of Oakley Capital, a European mid-market buyout firm which is also its adviser. Oakley's partner Steven Tredget told investors on 10 September that selling "a strip of existing fund commitments in the secondary market" was "being actively evaluated". That intent was read here on 21 September. By then the sale was already running, because Campbell Lutyens had started a two-phase process in late May that ended in September.

The interests sold were worth €313 million, or £272 million, at 31 March. Of that value, the largest line is Fund V at £161 million, or 39% of OCI's interest in the 2022 fund. The 2019 Fund IV follows at £68 million, and the two Origin funds and the 2024 Fund VI make up the rest. Fund III, the venture funds and the continuation vehicles stayed out of the sale. For what is in the sale, AlpInvest will pay €295 million, or £257 million, and about £275 million once the capital calls and distributions since March are added. Of that price, half arrives at completion in November, about £138 million, and the rest over three years. On top of the price, AlpInvest takes over about £244 million of commitments not yet called.

Two things in the structure explain why the discount is small. First, the buyers take on £244 million of unfunded commitments, almost as much as the £272 million of value they buy. Much of what the buyers sign for is therefore money still to be invested, rather than companies marked today. Second, AlpInvest pays half of the price over three years, and OCI will carry that half as a receivable marked to fair value.

Part of the sale runs through Oakley itself. Of the sale's £272 million, AlpInvest buys £177 million directly and £95 million through a new vehicle that Oakley manages. That vehicle is funded by AlpInvest and by Anchor Capital, a South African wealth manager that owns Credo in London. AlpInvest also leads Nautic's $3 billion vehicle with HarbourVest, as read here on 26 October. The Oakley vehicle can also invest alongside the Oakley funds, and it pays Oakley fees "within the typical range". Those fees make the sale a related-party transaction. So Peter Dubens, Oakley's founder, and his alternate David Till did not vote.

For reference, three other London trusts sold fund stakes in the past year, and the chart below sets their prices beside Oakley's. The first, HarbourVest Global, took 94% of value in December. The second, Pantheon International, sold 8.1% below value in May. The third, CT Private Equity Trust, sold 16.1% below in July.

Oakley's stakes sold at the same price as HarbourVest's, above Pantheon's and CT's

% of the value at each sale's reference date, four London trusts' sales of fund stakes since December 2025

Source: Oakley Capital Investments, RNS of 28 October 2026; HarbourVest Global Private Equity, 16 December 2025; Pantheon International, annual report of 4 August 2026; CT Private Equity Trust, half-year results of 28 August 2026; Jefferies, H1 2026 Global Secondary Market Review, p.5.

The board now has cash to spend on its own shares. It approved a further £20 million of buybacks for 2027, which takes that programme to £40 million. Beyond the buybacks, the board says the sale is the first of several steps to lift demand for the shares. Its chair, Christopher Samuel, put it this way: "This transaction provides third-party affirmation of the OCI NAV and demand for the Oakley Funds." That transaction completes in November, and the deferred £138 million comes in over the three years after it.

PGIM and LGT buy Tree Line's loan book

Direct lenders with a few billion dollars under management now get the continuation vehicle that only the largest houses used to get. The newest such lender is Tree Line Capital Partners. It has closed a $680 million vehicle for the loans of several of its direct lending funds, Alternative Credit Investor reported on Wednesday. It is based in San Francisco and lends to companies with $5 million to $30 million of earnings. Its vehicle was co-led by PGIM and LGT Capital Partners. It holds mostly senior secured first-lien loans to more than 60 US lower middle market companies, each backed by a private equity sponsor.

Tree Line filed for the vehicle a month ago. On 29 and 30 September it filed for Tree Line Continuity Fund I and for rollover vehicles for its Direct Lending II and III funds. The Continuity Fund's filing names Campbell Lutyens as placement agent, as read here on 1 October. Its filings still show nothing raised, so the size comes from the co-leads' announcement for now. The announcement gives no price, no share of investors who rolled and no split between the two funds.

PGIM and LGT both point to the size. Alex Stuart runs private credit secondaries at PGIM, and he said the deal shows "continuation vehicle solutions gain traction across a broader range of portfolio sizes". For PGIM it is the second such vehicle since September, after it invested beside Pantheon in PennantPark's $745 million fund, as read here on 9 September. For LGT it is a credit deal two weeks after a buyout one, because LGT co-led EMK's €1.25 billion vehicle for VDK, as read here on 16 October. Felix Janssen said the same from LGT, where he co-heads private credit solutions: "Credit secondaries have become an increasingly important tool for managers and investors".

Tree Line's vehicle is the smallest but one of the seven credit continuation vehicles reported this year

continuation vehicles for private credit funds, by size, $m, with the lead buyers

Tree Line raised $1.1 billion for its fourth fund in January, so investors who took cash have a successor fund open to them. Such investors had the same choice at KKR this week, where the first vehicle for Lending Partners III was led by AllianzGI at more than $460 million, as read yesterday.

Air First's fund drew more money than asked

Korea's largest continuation fund now has more money offered than it set out to raise, days before its deadline for foreign investors. The fund's sponsor, IMM Private Equity, needs about 1.8 trillion won of equity to move its stake in Air First into the new fund. Against that 1.8 trillion won, the commitments under discussion "appear likely to exceed IMM PE's original fundraising target", Herald Business reported on Tuesday.

IMM is a Seoul buyout firm, and Air First supplies nitrogen, oxygen and argon to Korea's chip makers. IMM bought the company in 2019 for about 1.4 trillion won, and in 2023 it sold about 30% to BlackRock at a value of about 3.7 trillion won. Of the company, the new fund takes the roughly 66% that IMM's Rose Gold No.3 and No.4 funds hold. It takes that stake at an enterprise value of about 4.2 trillion won, or $3.18 billion. Of that value, BlackRock's stake stays out, so the deal is worth about 3 trillion won. After more than 1 trillion won of acquisition financing, the fund needs about 1.8 trillion won of equity. That equity drew GIC first, and on 7 October Seoul Economic Daily reported that the fund was weighing a commitment, as read here on 7 October.

GIC and "multiple global secondary fund managers" did due diligence and "signaled interest in committing between roughly 300 billion and 500 billion won each", the paper says. Meanwhile, Korean pension funds and mutual aid associations are reviewing both re-investment and new commitments, with indications of about 1.5 trillion to 1.7 trillion won. The domestic indications alone come close to the 1.8 trillion won ask, so the foreign money decides how far above it the fund closes. But neither a lead investor, nor the price per share, nor the adviser has been reported, and nothing says what BlackRock will do with its 30%.

IMM has set a short calendar. It plans to close the foreign proposals by the end of this month and to settle the domestic commitments by the end of November. Its final closing is planned before the end of the year. A closing at or above 1.8 trillion won would pass the Korean record for such a vehicle. That record is Hahn & Co's, at about 1.9 trillion won for Ssangyong C&E in 2022, Seoul Economic Daily wrote in May.

On the radar

• Friday 30 October, then the week of 9 November, Luxembourg. The new share classes of Partners Group's Global Value SICAV move to a 2.5% quarterly redemption threshold, half the current one. Shareholders then vote on splitting the €6.6 billion gated fund in two.
• Monday 2 November, 3pm, London. HarbourVest Global Private Equity holds a private markets update for shareholders, two weeks before they vote on its $400 million tender at about 10% below the 30 September NAV. The trust paid for its last tender with a sale of fund stakes at 94% of value.
• Friday 4 December, then Monday 14 December, Washington. Comments close on the SEC's interval-fund modernisation and multi-class proposal, then on its cross-trading proposal. The first widens the funds that buy secondaries from private investors, and the second governs trades between a manager's own funds.
• Tuesday 3 November, 5pm, New York. Cox Capital's bids for Blackstone Private Credit Fund and HPS Corporate Lending Fund shares expire. Cox pays $20.65 for BCRED shares the fund valued at $23.51 on 30 September.
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