HarbourVest CEO on Why LPs Now Sell Secondaries by Choice
HarbourVest CEO John Toomey explains how private equity secondaries shifted from distressed sales into tools for active LP portfolio management.
When Fund Selection Is No Longer Enough w/ HarbourVest’s John Toomey
With Hugh MacArthur, John Toomey · Tuesday, November 10, 2026
HarbourVest CEO John Toomey joins Hugh MacArthur to discuss how private equity investing is evolving beyond traditional vintage-year fund picking toward active portfolio management. Toomey explains how secondary markets, continuation vehicles, and middle-market co-investments are transforming LP liquidity and capital allocation. He also outlines how HarbourVest leverages proprietary analytics and unbundles its intellectual property to evaluate manager alpha and create tailored market exposures.
Key takeaways
- In public equities and fixed income, secondary trading dwarfs primary issuance, but private equity historically inverted this structure by treating 10-year commitments as set-and-forget allocations. Read more →
- GP-led continuation vehicles now represent roughly half of the entire secondary market, shifting from an emergency liquidity valve into a standard tool for active portfolio management. Read more →
- HarbourVest opened its proprietary GP Alpha analytics engine to institutional clients to evaluate underlying asset selection. Read more →
- The private equity co-investment market has split into two separate models: mega-fund syndication desks on one end and middle-market co-underwriting partnerships on the other. Read more →
- Fund managers boasting a 2.6x MOIC and a 24% net IRR from 2015 to 2017 vintages are getting turned down by institutional allocators because those numbers only sit in the second quartile for that era. Read more →
5 articles from this episode
Why HarbourVest Put $5.5B Into Continuation Vehicles
HarbourVest CEO John Toomey explains why continuation funds generate above-median returns and how his firm underwrites GP-led secondaries.
HarbourVest Unbundles GP Alpha to Expose Sector Beta
HarbourVest CEO John Toomey explains how deal-level analytics separate true manager selection skill from sector beta in private equity funds.
HarbourVest CEO John Toomey on Middle-Market Co-Underwriting
HarbourVest CEO John Toomey explains why middle-market co-underwriting beats mega-cap syndication desks, evaluating 1,300 live deals a year.
Why 24 Percent IRR No Longer Clears the LP Hurdle
HarbourVest CEO John Toomey explains why mid-2010s funds with 2.6x returns face re-up freezes as LPs consolidate manager rosters.
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