With €3.5bn raised across 13 transactions in just two years, Rothschild & Co’s GP Solutions business has cemented its presence in the fast-evolving secondary advisory landscape.
Chris Hawley, Global Head of Private Capital, and Andrei Brougham, Head of GP Solutions, believe the bank’s unique integration strategy, sector expertise, and deep sovereign wealth ties are powering future growth.
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Nicholas Lanel, newly appointed to the GP Solutions team, concurs.
The global private capital market has seen a pronounced evolution over the past few years, particularly in the GP-led secondaries space. Once considered a niche area, continuation vehicles (CVs) have now emerged as a powerful and mainstream exit tool for private equity sponsors seeking to retain exposure to high-performing assets.
Rothschild & Co, traditionally known for its blue-chip M&A franchise, has quietly but rapidly built a formidable presence in this growing segment. Under the leadership of Chris Hawley and Andrei Brougham, the firm’s GP Solutions arm has become a critical part of its broader private capital strategy, and a highly complementary one.
“We have a market-leading private equity franchise, and our business is set up to advise sponsors on the full suite of monetisation alternatives for their portfolio companies,” explains Hawley. “GP Solutions is a critical part of this offering, and highly synergistic with our sector-driven approach.”
Indeed, the firm’s decision to embed GP Solutions within its sector and sponsor coverage teams, rather than treat it as a standalone practice, is proving to be a strategic masterstroke. As the secondary market grows increasingly competitive with new entrants, differentiation is key.
“We made a strategic decision to integrate our GP Solutions practice into our broader sponsor coverage and sector franchise,” Brougham says.
“As the secondaries market continues to evolve with new entrants emerging, underwriting with traditional sector driven sell-side expertise is becoming very salient to clients. In addition, we have unrivalled access to other pockets of capital including family offices and SWFs that are becoming increasingly relevant for CV transactions.”
This integrated model is yielding tangible results. In 2023–2024 alone, the firm raised €3.5bn ($3.8bn) across 13 GP-led transactions.
According to Brougham, that success comes down to three core ingredients: “Best-in-class execution, trusted advisory relationships with clients and strong buy-side connectivity. In addition, our integration with our sector teams has been critical to getting complex transactions over the line, and in convincingly articulating equity stories to investors that have a lot of choice about where to spend their time.”
A Game-Changing Moment
To support this momentum, Rothschild & Co recently welcomed Nicholas Lanel, a seasoned secondaries expert who previously led advisory teams at UBS and Evercore.
For Lanel, the growth of continuation vehicles is nothing short of transformational for the industry.
“The emergence of continuation vehicles as an exit path for star assets is a game changer for the PE industry,” says Lanel.
“Whilst we are barely in the first inning, clients are already expecting secondary and sector expertise to be delivered on a seamless basis, together with access to pockets of strategic capital that can extend the capabilities of pure secondary buyers on the larger end of these transactions. On these three fronts combined, the Rothschild & Co platform is unmatched.”
Why Continuation Vehicles Are Booming
The rise of GP-led deals, particularly single-asset continuation vehicles, has been driven by a fundamental shift in how private equity firms manage their portfolios.
“Private capital markets have evolved rapidly in recent years,” says Hawley. “Sponsors see CVs as a way to hold on to best performing assets, leveraging their knowledge of the business and their existing relationship with its management team. In particular for mid-market assets, CVs allow sponsors and their investors to benefit from continued growth and value creation under their ownership as opposed to selling to another fund.”
That said, not every CV deal gets traction.
“Investors face a large amount of choice about where to deploy capital,” Brougham notes. “We are taking more time to preview deals and educate the investor community together with our industry teams before any formal process to make sure that our clients’ transactions get the right level of attention. Best in class assets with top quartile return potential are those that are attracting the most attention.”
Sovereign Wealth Funds: A New Frontier
One of the most interesting dynamics in the space today is the growing role of sovereign wealth funds. These institutional giants are increasingly engaging in GP-led transactions, especially larger CVs, and Rothschild & Co is uniquely positioned to facilitate that interest.
“Based on a number of conversations we are having, sovereign wealth funds seem to be increasingly turning their attention to opportunities they see in the secondaries market,” says Brougham. “CVs are also a way for them to participate in transactions in the mid-market, which ordinarily are too small for them to invest in on a direct basis.”
In practice, SWFs are not just passive participants, they often act as anchors or co-leads in single-asset CVs. That influence is something Rothschild & Co has worked to cultivate.
“The large SWFs are able to act as both a leader and follow in single asset CVs which can be a determining success factor on the larger CV’s,” says Hawley. “Hence our decision to formerly integrate our GP Solutions and strategic capital teams within our Private Capital group.”
When structuring CVs with SWFs in mind, alignment is key. “We get the most engagement from sovereign wealth funds when we can position transactions as opportunities to back best-in-class assets with strong growth tail winds ahead of them,” Brougham adds. “Alignment of interest with the GP and management team are also very important factors.”
Thanks to deep regional roots in the Middle East and Asia, Rothschild & Co is already a trusted advisor to many of the world’s largest SWFs. “We have outstanding long-term relationships with sovereign wealth funds, based on our large teams in the Middle East and Singapore,” says Hawley. “The SWFs also recognise our market leading sponsor business as a key source of deal-flow.”
What’s Next for GP Solutions?
Looking ahead, both Hawley and Brougham see substantial runway for growth, and market share.
“In the three years that we’ve started the business, we have advised on €3.5bn of closed volume,” Hawley says. “We continue to see strong growth opportunities given the prevalence of continuation vehicle as a viable monetisation alternative for sponsors, and the fact that we are in a strong position to increase our market share based on the strength of our sponsor practice.”
The firm’s core strength remains its ability to marry product expertise with deep sector knowledge
“We are already fully integrated across sector and product at Rothschild & Co” says Brougham. “Our clients receive the advice that’s appropriate for them without any bias towards one solution over another.”
As the secondaries market matures, Rothschild & Co’s approach, deliberate, integrated, and global, could set the template for the next era of private capital advisory.
