5 Secondary Questions for Brett Gordon, HarbourVest Partners
HarbourVest Partners today announced that it has raised $2.9 billion for its seventh secondaries fund, named Dover VII. So we've got 5 questions for Harbourvest managing director Brett Gordon: 1. There has been lots of secondary capital raised over the past 24 months, and there obviously are a lot of interested sellers. But actual deal volume hasn’t seemed to correspond. Is it still a supply/demand gap, or more a chasm in buyer/seller price expectations. From the supply/demand imbalance perspective, I’d say that the supply of assets available for sale still far outstrips the demand, or capital raised to purchase assets. Not just by a little bit, but by a multiple, which dramatically favors the buyers and lets them be very selective. But you’re right that there is still a bit of an expectation gap between buyers and sellers. Part of that is driven by buyers’ underlying uncertainties over future portfolio company performance. We’re looking at assets and trying to predict what they’ll be worth in the short-term, mid-term and long-term. But how do you do that in today’s environment with any certainty? So you either offer to buy something at a very low price, or don’t offer anything at all.
