Clipway becomes the world’s largest independent, dedicated secondaries firm
Clipway announced the final close of Clipway Secondary Fund I (“CSF I”), making it the largest-ever debut secondaries platform at $6.4 billion, and establishing Clipway as the world’s largest independent, dedicated, tech-enabled secondaries firm.
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CSF I received strong support from 186 limited partners globally, including sovereign wealth funds, pension plans, insurance companies, endowments, foundations, family offices and other leading institutional investors. By capital committed, CSF I’s LP base is diversified across Europe (44%), North America & Latin America (21%), the Middle East (18%) and Asia (17%). Since inception, Mubadala Investment Company, Carmignac and General Atlantic have played an important role as strategic partners to Clipway, supporting the firm’s development and growth, with Clipway playing a key role in shaping and advancing Carmignac’s private equity platform.
The close marks a defining milestone for Clipway, which was founded to build a next-generation private equity secondaries firm combining deep investment experience, proprietary technology, artificial intelligence, institutional scale and broad alignment across the partnership.
Under the leadership of Managing Partners Vincent Gombault, Ingmar Vallano and Benoit Verbrugghe, supported by Partners Inigo Weston, Joshua Manasseh, Jonathan Hillgarth-Williams, Harry Vander Elst, David Enriquez and Adaleine Yong, Clipway has grown to 62 professionals across 6 offices globally, including 18 professionals in data science and technology. Clipway was deliberately built as a broad partnership, with equity ownership widely shared across the senior team and no individual owning more than 10% of the firm.
TESS, Clipway’s proprietary Tech-Enabled Secondaries System, is embedded across the firm’s investment process, supporting sourcing, screening, underwriting, monitoring and portfolio construction. The TESS database now covers over 38,500 private companies and 3,400 private equity funds, enabling Clipway to analyse secondary opportunities from the underlying company level up. The system uses advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to support investment decisions, which remain driven by the judgement and experience of Clipway’s investment team. Clipway’s key strategic partners also have access to TESS to monitor and analyse their own private equity portfolios.
CSF I focuses on diversified LP-led secondary transactions in North American and Western European buyout funds. To date, Clipway has completed over $6 billion of transaction volume diversified across 1,403 companies in 177 funds, selected from more than $267 billion of opportunities processed through TESS. This highly selective approach is designed to generate alpha within the LP-led secondary market by acquiring high-quality private equity exposure at attractive discounts to market pricing, with a focus on developed markets and mid-market companies.
A central part of the strategy is to offer differentiated deal flow to Clipway’s partners. To date, two-thirds of transaction volume deployed has been sourced on a proprietary and off-market basis, directly by Clipway. The firm has offered one-to-one co-investment alongside the fund to existing LPs on a no-fee, no-carry basis.
The Managing Partners of Clipway commented:
“Closing CSF I is a defining milestone for Clipway, and we are grateful for the trust placed in us by our investors and strategic partners. We have built a global, aligned and differentiated secondaries firm, combining deep investment expertise with TESS, our proprietary technology platform that harnesses AI and machine learning for data-driven investment analysis. Our focus now is to continue earning that confidence through highly selective deployment, differentiated sourcing and attractive risk-adjusted returns.”
The final close comes at a time of significant growth in the global secondaries market, driven by the continued expansion of private markets, slower exit activity and increasing demand for LP liquidity. As a dedicated secondaries firm with blue-chip investors, proprietary technology and global reach, Clipway believes it is well positioned to capture this opportunity.
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