What are the benefits of a private equity firm with a history of primary, direct investing combining with a secondaries specialist? Chris Jaroch and Pete Labbat of Bridgepoint count the ways.
In a fascinating conversation with Liquid Courage’s Joncarlo Mark and David Snow, Jaroch and Labbat discuss the 2025 merger of Bridgepoint, a $98 billion private marketts asset manager, with Newbury Partners, a veteran secondaries specialist with $4 billion in assets under management. Jaroch and Labbatt argue the combined Bridgepoint-Newbury will create advantages for the secondaries platform as a middle-market investor, as well as advantages for the broader Bridgepoint platform.
“On the GP-led side, we can bring our industry expertise across all the sectors we play in at Bridgepoint to facilitate and, in some cases, increase the knowledge advantage that Newbury has when evaluating a GP-led transaction in healthcare or business services,” Labbat tells Liquid Courage.
Among the takeaways in this episode of Liquid Courage:
• The acquisition of Newbury Partners was a natural fit because Newbury had already built its secondaries strategy around middle-market funds and assets — the same territory where Bridgepoint operates in its core business.
• GP-led continuation vehicles have become a mainstream tool for extending the life of winning portfolio companies, though a high percentage still fail to close, primarily due to valuation disputes between GPs and their LPs.
• Current market conditions — stalled M&A activity, a shut IPO window, and LP cash needs — are driving a surge in secondary transaction volume as investors take portfolio management into their own hands rather than waiting for traditional exits.
Access the transcript and a searchable content archive at the Liquid Courage Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/liquidcouragepod/p/why-bridgepoint-and-newbury-combined?r=6l28kr&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
#privateequity #secondary #middlemarket
