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Stifel Europe is pleased to release its latest Report: “Company-Led Secondaries: Catalysing the $77bn Venture Capital Liquidity Wave in Private Markets”, which explores how issuers are navigating the private-for-longer reality and the transition of secondary liquidity from a niche activity into a structural pillar of private markets.
From tactical one-off to permanent structural pillar
For private companies, a strategy for secondaries is no longer a "nice-to-have"; it is now a strategic necessity alongside IPOs and M&A. Driven by a private-for-longer reality, companies are institutionalising recurring liquidity windows as standard governance. Leaders like OpenAI ($6.6bn tender) and Stripe ($159bn valuation) already use these programmes to manage extended private lifecycles.
The strategic CFO mandate for cap table organisation
Company-led tenders have emerged as the gold standard for managing heterogeneous cap tables. By proactively addressing early-stage investors with liquidity needs, CFOs can simplify governance and protect future IPO pricing from the downward pressure of post-lockup sell-offs.
A strategic weapon in the war for talent
The historic stigma surrounding early liquidity has been replaced by a view of secondaries as a critical retention mechanism. High-growth firms now use these programmes to compete with public incumbents by translating paper wealth into cash, countering talent poaching without forcing a premature exit. Liquidity ensures contributors are rewarded for value creation along the way, preventing departures associated with decades-long exit horizons
The shift to fundamentals-based pricing
Secondary pricing has matured into an independent, bottom-up exercise grounded in financial analysis rather than legacy valuation marks. This decoupling from previous pandemic-era rounds has stabilised the market, with many new rounds printing at massive premiums.
Download the report to learn more.