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News Analysis
Banks gear up to offer advisory services for private funds
by Lisa Fu
A recruitment drive is underway on Wall Street as investment banks vie for new business to boost their bottom lines. But the new hires will not be working on M&A deals. Instead, their job is to advise private funds investing in assets such as private credit or private equity.
Private capital advisory, or PCA, is a growth industry in financial services as private credit and other private market asset managers seek expert input on capital raising, secondary transactions or complex deals.
As private fund managers push into ever more sophisticated territory, investment banks are keen to grab their share of the advisory action.
“If you estimate a fee pool for this industry, we think it went over a billion dollars last year for the first time,” said Todd Miller, global co-head of secondary advisory at Jefferies.
Seeking new income streams
The PCA business is expanding along with the widening reach of private credit, from capital raising to secondary transactions. Advisory services have become a priority for banks looking for fresh income streams, with PCA no longer dismissed as a niche business or just an adjunct to core M&A.
Going into the summer, US investment bank Lazard placed a big bet on PCA with a deal to buy private funds specialist Campbell Lutyens. Lazard was willing to stump up around USD 575m, plus up to USD 85m tied to multi-year performance to acquire the firm’s expertise in fundraising, secondary deals and other advisory services for fund managers.
Once the deal closes, the combined Lazard CL will stand on its own as Lazard’s third global business arm alongside asset management and investment banking. This is a major shift from when Lazard kept its own PCA team tucked inside the investment bank, which was best known for its M&A and restructuring work.
Senior bankers are also on the move. In the first quarter, Dirk Jonske and Adrian Siew joined Rothschild & Co in New York as managing directors to advise on GP-led secondaries deals. Boutique investment bank Configure Partners launched a PCA business last month, hiring Ravi Mehta, who was formerly at PJT Partners, and Jozef Lampa, previously at Evercore.
PCA bankers have stepped out from the shadow of M&A deal-makers to find their skills carry a premium. Demand is growing in tandem with the secondaries market, according to William Barrett, managing director and co-founder of Reach Capital, a boutique European placement agency and strategic advisory firm.
By buying or selling stakes in private funds on the secondaries market, managers can return capital to investors when standard routes via M&A deals are blocked. GP-led deal volume reached an estimated USD 116bn in 2025, up from USD 72bn in 2024, according to Lazard’s annual report on the secondaries market.
GPs are turning to placement agents
Zohair Tariq
Managing director
Raymond James
“If you’re good at doing M&A, I’d say it’s probably a natural step for you to acquire or build a PCA team,” said Barrett. “It’s the same business model, and it would be as profitable.”
Over the past two years, banks have even started to build dedicated teams for niche areas, such as GP-led private credit secondaries, collateralised fund obligations or real-asset funds. “We’re seeing a level of specialisation that you saw in investment banking in the 90s,” said Jefferies’ Miller.
By adding PCA to their toolkit, banks are positioning themselves as full-service providers to private fund managers, said Zohair Tariq, managing director at Raymond James.
As M&A activity stalls, clients are looking for novel solutions for their liquidity or capital needs, with PCA bankers eager to oblige. Options include collateralised obligations based on private funds or rated-note feeder vehicles that issue bond-like debt and invest the proceeds in an underlying fund. Alternatively, single assets can be rolled into continuation vehicles rather than being sold outright.
With fundraising tougher than ever, general partners may turn to PCA agents with international investor networks, rather than relying on their own sales teams.
Capital providers with money tied up in vintage funds have limited scope for fresh outlays, while funds have struggled to find cash to return to investors.
“GPs that never needed a placement agent are now employing them,” Tariq said. “Buyout fundraising’s been down three, four years in a row.”
Driving new business
Banks with a PCA presence may be able to cross-sell services, market sources say. For example, a PCA group that helped with fundraising may later refer that same client to an M&A team as that fund starts to buy or sell assets. Similarly, as the fund’s portfolio companies refinance, the client may turn to the bank’s leveraged finance team.
“You are there to be a partner and a strategic advisor throughout the lifecycle of the GP’s investing efforts,” said Tariq.
