This is increasingly true in the Private Equity (PE) world...
A lot of recent exits have been sales to other PE funds rather than to the IPO market.
PE / VC have become an Assets under Management (AUM) game where the GPs only care about the fixed fee they get on the cash invested. With funds locked in for 10 years or more, that's a massive annuity - who needs outperformance?
And if you do need to show liquidity, let's exchange a few assets between the usual suspects...
You seem to be insinuating that a PE exit via a sale to another fund is somehow inherently bad. Many PE investors would argue the opposite - IPOs have lockups and price volatility that increase both certainty of exit and time to exit. A sale to another PE firm or corporate entity generally deliver a large onetime cash payment.
A dual track (where you run an auction to both private and public buyers and simultaneously file an S-1 to IPO) maximizes the value to the seller. This sort of disproves the premise.
A lot of recent exits have been sales to other PE funds rather than to the IPO market.
PE / VC have become an Assets under Management (AUM) game where the GPs only care about the fixed fee they get on the cash invested. With funds locked in for 10 years or more, that's a massive annuity - who needs outperformance?
And if you do need to show liquidity, let's exchange a few assets between the usual suspects...