Five secondary buyers have posted standing bids for stakes in flagship infrastructure funds on Palico, and none is below 90% of NAV. The highest, for a 2023 fund, reaches par. Meanwhile, AE Industrial Partners has raised about $850 million led by Lexington Partners to keep its defense parts distributor Blue Raven and buy more companies for it. In addition, Neuberger Berman's sixth secondaries fund shows $3.4 billion raised from 479 investors in a filing made on Monday.

The tape

• DATA  Blue Owl Technology Income paid for 12.8% of the shares tendered at 30 September, $137.2 million at $9.85, while its credit sister's requests fell.
• FILING  Madison River Capital, David Wittels' New York firm, has filed to raise a continuation vehicle for a company it calls JDC, nothing raised yet.
• PEOPLE  Moelis hired Zachary Herr from Evercore as managing director to run its LP secondaries business in New York, SecondaryLink reported on Monday.
• REGULATION  The FCA found a firm that sold an asset to its own fund at NAV after outside bids, its review of 23 October says.
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No bid below 90% for flagship infra

Buyers of flagship infrastructure funds are bidding at least 90% of NAV, and up to par for the youngest fund. Those buyers posted five standing bids on Palico, which shared them with The Secondary Brief, priced on NAV at 30 June 2026.

Palico runs an online marketplace for LP-led secondaries, and Palico LLC is an SEC-registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA. The marketplace sees positions of all sizes, including stakes of $50 million to $100 million in recent months. On it, a standing bid names the fund a buyer wants and the price it would pay before any seller turns up. So an investor who holds one of these funds can sell at that price without running a sale process.

Each bid is a floor, set by the buyer after its investment committee approved it, so a sale can close above it. Four of those floors sit between 90% and 92%. The oldest of the four is a 2016 European core fund, and its buyer offers 90%. Meanwhile, a 2022 value-add fund across North America and Europe draws 91%, and a 2021 North American core-plus fund draws 90% to 92%.

The two European core funds draw the same price. The same listed manager raised the 2016 fund and a 2018 one, and both are bid at 90%. Palico sees strong demand for these funds at that level, with some transfers closing above it.

No standing bid sits below 90% of NAV, and the youngest fund's reaches par

Standing bids on Palico by fund vintage and strategy, % of NAV at 30 June 2026, beside Jefferies' H1 average and the last infrastructure sale on the platform

Source: Palico, standing bids and transactions shared with The Secondary Brief, October 2026; Jefferies, H1 2026 Global Secondary Market Review, p.5.

1. The 2023 fund's buyer gave a range, from 95% to 100%. Each range on the chart is one buyer's.
2. The two stakes in European funds of 2016 and 2017 drew offers of 85% to 90% and sold at 90%.

The vintage weighs on the price, as the youngest fund shows. It is a 2023 core fund across Europe and North America. Its buyer offers 95% to 100% of NAV, against 90% for the same strategy in 2016 and 2018. A portfolio bought in the last three years carries a NAV close to the price the manager paid, which gives a buyer less reason to discount it.

The platform's own trades fit those floors. Those trades were two stakes in European infrastructure funds of 2016 and 2017, which sold at 90% of NAV in a recent process. The indicative offers on those stakes ranged from 85% to 90%, so the final price came at the top of that range. Meanwhile, for reference, Jefferies put LP infrastructure portfolios at 91% of NAV on average in the first half of 2026.

AE Industrial keeps Blue Raven to buy more

AE Industrial Partners has kept Blue Raven, its distributor of defense parts, and raised new money from Lexington Partners to pay for the company's next acquisitions rather than sell it. The firm closed AE Industrial Partners BR Fund, a single-asset continuation vehicle of about $850 million, it said on Monday. Lexington led the vehicle, several other institutions invested beside it, and Blue Raven's management and some existing shareholders rolled "significant proceeds" into it. The vehicle's advisers were Harris Williams for the sponsor and the company and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett for Lexington. Kirkland & Ellis was counsel to the sponsor and the company, its own note says, a week after it added a continuation vehicle lawyer as partner.

AE Industrial is a Boca Raton firm with about $9.4 billion under management. It has made more than 155 investments since 2015 in aerospace, defense and industrial services, and it first invested in Blue Raven in 2019. Blue Raven sells hard-to-source parts and systems to defense manufacturers in more than 40 countries. However, the release does not name the fund that sold, the price, or the share of the old fund's investors that rolled.

The new money is for buying, said Jon Nemo, AE Industrial's managing partner. It will give Blue Raven capital for growth projects and possible acquisitions, he said. Blue Raven's debt had already been reset this year. On 21 January Fortress led a $500 million senior secured facility for the company, a $450 million term loan and a $50 million revolver, to refinance what it owed.

The buyer, Lexington, is Franklin Templeton's secondaries arm with more than $86 billion raised. In April it co-led Reverence Capital's vehicle for Osaic, a deal of more than $2 billion of new capital. Neither Blue Raven's price nor its first acquisition with the new money has been announced.

Half of single-asset vehicle volume priced at NAV in the first half

Purchase price relative to NAV, % of H1 2026 transaction volume, single-asset against multi-asset vehicles

Source: Evercore, H1 2026 Secondary Market Review, p.10.

For reference, Evercore counted $34 billion of single-asset vehicles in the first half of 2026, 53% of all GP-led volume, on page 8 of its July review. On page 10 it puts 52% of that volume at net asset value and 14% above it. So a buyer paying par for a sponsor's best company is the market's middle case.

Neuberger's sixth secondaries fund has $3.4bn

Neuberger Berman has raised two thirds of the $5 billion it wants for its sixth secondaries flagship, a year after the first money came in. Its NB Secondary Opportunities Fund VI has raised $1.89 billion from 308 investors since 10 November 2025, the amendment filed on Monday shows. Its Cayman twin for investors outside the US has raised $1.48 billion from 171. Both vehicles had nothing raised when they first filed on 30 October 2025, so $3.37 billion arrived in a year, about $7 million an investor. Their $5 billion target comes from Bloomberg, as Private Equity Wire relayed it on 20 August 2025.

Neuberger Berman is the New York manager whose private markets arm buys fund stakes, co-investments and continuation vehicles. Its fifth secondaries fund closed at $4.9 billion in September 2022, and the fourth at $2.5 billion in January 2017. The same house manages NB Private Equity Partners, the London-listed trust that sold five co-investment stakes at 7% below their December value on 30 October. So Neuberger sells stakes through its trust in the quarter it raises money to buy them through its fund.

The money is arriving in a market whose fundraising has slowed. Secondaries funds held final closes on $80.5 billion in the first nine months of 2026, Secondaries Investor counted on 19 October, after $118 billion in the same months of 2025. Neuberger's fund is smaller than the $10 billion CVC closed in September and the $6 billion Pantheon closed on 22 October. But it takes tickets from $500,000 and four banks sell it. They are Neuberger's own broker-dealer, Stifel, Jefferies and Merrill Lynch. Its filing names five managing directors, Tristram Perkins and Benjamin Perl among them, and gives no closing date.

On the radar

• Today, New York. Apollo reports its third quarter at 8:30am, and Hamilton Lane its fiscal second quarter at 11am. At 5pm Cox Capital's bids for Blackstone Private Credit Fund and HPS Corporate Lending Fund shares expire.
• Thursday 5 November, 8:30am New York, then London. Carlyle reports its third quarter, the quarter in which AlpInvest agreed to buy Oakley Capital Investments' fund stakes at 94.25% of value. The same day NB Private Equity holds its capital markets day on the companies it could sell within a year.
• Monday 9 November, 10am New York, then Luxembourg. KKR reports its third quarter, its first call since its credit continuation vehicle closed. The same week the shareholders of Partners Group Global Value SICAV vote on splitting the €6.6 billion gated fund in two. A yes puts about €5.2 billion into a run-off fund that pays out at most 2.5% a quarter.
• Monday 16 November, Guernsey. HarbourVest Global Private Equity's shareholders vote on its $400 million tender at 10% below net asset value, and the tender closes on 19 November. The trust paid for its last tender with a sale of fund stakes at 94% of value.
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