Penta Capital has sold Sumer, its UK accountancy consolidator, to a continuation vehicle it manages at about £1 billion, with TPG GP Solutions as sole lead. Its sale at that price had stalled in May. Meanwhile, L3Harris's pension no longer holds five buyout fund stakes worth $142 million a year earlier, its 2025 filing shows. In addition, IMM Private Equity has picked the foreign lead for the Air First continuation fund it has been raising, at ₩4.2 trillion.

The tape

• DEAL  Astorg is exploring a second continuation fund for IQ-EQ, SecondaryLink reported, four years after a €1.3 billion vehicle led by AlpInvest and Goldman Sachs.
• FUND  StepStone activated its seventh venture secondaries fund after quarter-end, adding $1.8 billion of fee-earning assets, and registered its Cayman vehicle on Monday.
• FUND  Eurazeo's balance sheet put €200 million into its own €2.3 billion ESF V, and sold 13% of its portfolio against a 15% target.
• FILING  Riverside has raised $444 million and $354 million since 21 October for two vehicles named RVF Argus, placed by Jefferies, most probably a continuation vehicle.
• DATA  Carlyle AlpInvest took in $1.4 billion last quarter, and its fee-related earnings were $68.1 million, against $87.5 million a year earlier, as flagged on Thursday.
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Penta keeps Sumer with one buyer's money

A sponsor whose £1 billion auction stopped in May has kept the company with one buyer's money instead. That sponsor is Penta Capital. It said on Thursday that Sumer Group now sits in a single-asset continuation vehicle at an enterprise value of about £1 billion, TPG's release says, with TPG GP Solutions as sole lead and anchor. Penta is reinvesting, and its existing investors were offered "optional liquidity".

Sumer is the business that Warren Mead, a former KPMG chief operating officer, founded in 2022 to buy accountancy practices serving small companies. His group now counts more than 50 acquisitions, about 3,500 staff and revenue "approaching £350 million", the release says. Its owner is Penta Capital, a London firm that hired Continuum in September 2025 to run a sale, City AM reported on 25 May. That sale sought £1 billion and stalled because the buyout groups that looked questioned the price, the same article says, citing The Times. So Penta weighed a continuation vehicle or a dividend recapitalisation instead. Then SecondaryLink named TPG as the lead on 19 October, as read here on 27 October.

Sumer went from a stalled £1bn sale to a £1bn continuation vehicle in six months

The dated steps, from the founding to Thursday's close

Source: TPG, release, 5 November 2026; City AM, report, 25 May 2026; SecondaryLink, report, 19 October 2026.

The vehicle was most probably raised to pay for the acquisitions still to come. Its new capital is there "to continue to drive significant further M&A", the release says. The same day Sumer refinanced its debt with a club of Ares, BlackRock, Pemberton and Investec. However, TPG's release cites "strong interest from several large US and European PE investors", yet TPG is the only buyer named. The adviser named on the secondary is Lazard CL, in the first mandate announced since Lazard created the name on Monday.

L3Harris's pension sold five buyout stakes

A corporate pension that handed $1.4 billion of obligations to insurers in 2025 also sold five stakes in young buyout funds. That pension is the L3Harris Pension Master Trust, and its filing for 2025 no longer lists Blackstone Capital Partners VIII, AEA Investors Fund VII, Carlyle Partners VIII or Cornell Capital's first and second funds. A year earlier those five were worth $141.8 million, the 2024 schedule shows. The 2025 schedule carries a new line named "Private Equity Sale" at minus $28.2 million.

L3Harris is the Florida defense contractor whose master trust holds $7.2 billion for its pension plans. Those plans shrank by choice. On 14 March 2025 the company bought group annuities that moved $1.2 billion of obligations for about 22,000 retirees to an insurer, paid with plan assets, its annual report says. A plan that pays an insurer in cash needs assets it can sell, so the private book went first. Private equity funds held at net asset value fell to $894 million at 2 January 2026 from $1,127 million a year earlier, page 67 shows. Unfunded commitments to those funds fell by $168 million, to $371 million.

The sale was a selection. It took 21 interests off the schedule in all, among them tail-end positions such as Stirling Square's second fund. But 60 remain, including Clayton Dubilier & Rice XI and KKR North America XIII, both 2021 funds. The funds sold are of the same age: Blackstone's eighth collected $26 billion in 2019, AEA's seventh $4.8 billion that December and Carlyle's eighth $14.8 billion from October 2021. Finally, Cornell Capital, Henry Cornell's New York firm, closed its first at $1.325 billion in June 2018.

The same funds changed hands in the same months in the evergreens' books, where the price is written. Ardian's US evergreen bought an interest in Blackstone Capital Partners VIII on 30 September 2025 at 88.3% of its value that day. Coller's evergreen bought AEA Investors Fund VII the same day at 96.7%. Then Coller and StepStone bought Blackstone VIII again on 31 March 2026, at 92.0% and 94.7%. Nothing says these were L3Harris's interests.

Source: L3Harris Pension Master Trust, Form 5500 schedules for 2024 and 2025, and the buyers' reports linked in the table, with Coller's 31 March 2026 and StepStone's 31 March 2026 reports for the March prices. A price is cost over fair value on the day of purchase. The Carlyle VIII price is read at the buyer's next report, so the value may have moved.

The funds L3Harris sold traded at 88% to 97% of value in the evergreens' books

Cost over fair value on the day of purchase, % of NAV; hollow dots are prices read at a later report

Source: the buyers' N-CSR and N-CSRS reports linked in the table, and Ares Private Markets Fund at 30 September 2023 for the 2023 Carlyle VIII price; Jefferies, Global Secondary Market Review, July 2026, p.5, for the 91% buyout average of the first half.

L3Harris says it expects "to continue evaluating opportunities to strategically manage" its pension obligations, and its next schedule, for 2026, is due in October 2027.

Coller EQT sets Air First's foreign price

The foreign price for Korea's largest continuation fund is now set, and it is 13.5% above the one BlackRock paid in 2023. The buyer that set it is Coller EQT, which IMM Private Equity has picked as the lead foreign investor in the vehicle it is raising for Air First, Seoul Economic Daily reported on Friday. Its sources put the value at ₩4.2 trillion. The same paper says Coller EQT "offered the most favorable terms" among several foreign bidders. Coller EQT is the buyer whose wealth funds opened to Australian investors on 28 October, and the other foreign investors now join on its conditions.

Air First is the industrial gas supplier that IMM bought from Linde in 2019 for ₩1.3 trillion, when it was Linde Korea. It pipes gases to semiconductor lines, Samsung Electronics' among them. In June 2023 BlackRock's fourth infrastructure fund bought 30% for ₩1.11 trillion. That price valued the company at ₩3.7 trillion, and IMM kept 70%. Of IMM's 70%, the new vehicle would take most, about 65% of the company. Its foreign investors would put in $300 million to $400 million, and Korean ones about ₩1.5 trillion. Both tranches are due by the end of the year, IMM says.

Air First has been priced three times in seven years, each time higher

Value of 100% of the company at each transaction, ₩tn

Source: GPCA, IMM Private Equity to acquire Linde Korea, 8 March 2019, citing Reuters; The Korea Economic Daily, BlackRock buys $860 mn stake, 9 June 2023; Seoul Economic Daily, report, 6 November 2026.

The raise has run ahead of its target and behind its calendar. Its commitments passed the ₩1.8 trillion target by late October, Invest Chosun reported on 26 October, as read here on 31 October. But the signing slipped from October to November because some foreign investors asked for more diligence. The same report said BlackRock holds consent rights on key decisions. It also said some Korean lenders and mutual aid funds lean towards cash at about 20 times earnings.

On the radar

• 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, with about €5.2 billion going to a run-off fund.
• Thursday 12 November, after the close, then Monday 16 November. Cerebras reports its third quarter. Its lock-up ends two trading days later under its prospectus, after two early releases of about 19.4 million shares each on 14 and 28 October.
• Friday 13 November, 3pm Seoul. Korea Venture Investment Corp closes applications for its ₩75 billion secondary compartment, ₩25 billion for each of three managers, opened on Friday. The managers are to be chosen by the end of the year.
• 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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