Goldman and Evercore pitch evergreen funds to buyout firms

Goldman Sachs and Evercore are pitching private equity firms on evergreen continuation vehicles that could hold assets for 10 to 15 years. Bankers at Jefferies, Raymond James and Lazard are making the same pitch, Financial Advisor Magazine reported on Oct. 19, citing people familiar with the matter.

Private equity managers have struggled to sell assets with borrowing costs higher and valuations weaker. Continuation funds have become a way to keep control of promising holdings while returning cash to investors, and some managers have rolled one continuation vehicle into another in deals known as CV-squared.

For a wealth allocator whose fund rolls into one of these vehicles, the exit is the term to test. The people familiar with the matter said the market is still working out how investors who want out would be paid, with distributions from the underlying assets and money from new investors among the possibilities. They also said the structure could invite more scrutiny of carried interest.

Continuation funds accounted for just under 50% of the $121 billion of secondary transactions in the first half of 2026, according to an Evercore report cited by the magazine. Existing vehicles typically run five years with two possible annual extensions.

Sunaina Sinha Haldea, Raymond James's global head of private capital advisory, said the market is "at the very early stages of this emergence of permanent capital CV." Such vehicles, she said, "will have more unfunded capital to support the growth of the asset, and there is no pressure to exit."

In a fixed-life fund, a sale or an extension settles the question of what pays an investor who leaves. In an evergreen vehicle, the people familiar with the matter said the answer could be cash from the underlying assets or money from new investors, which would tie an exiting investor's liquidity to the manager's next raise as well as to the sale of a company.