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Continuation fund advisory roles have become more visible because the product has moved from niche liquidity solution to mainstream private equity exit alternative. Continuation fund transactions reached an estimated USD63 billion of volume in 2024, according to CFA Institute, and the growth is being driven by a weak M&A and IPO exit environment rather than by uncomplicated investor enthusiasm. CFA Institute also estimates that 80% to 90% of legacy limited partners take the cash rather than roll into the new vehicle. That combination creates a specific advisory need: someone has to price an asset where the general partner sits on both sides of the trade, run a credible competitive process, and put a roll-or-sell decision in front of LPs. The teams doing that work hire from a narrow set of feeder backgrounds, and they test for judgement that a standard M&A interview may never touch.
Continuation fund advisory sits inside Private Capital Advisory (PCA) or secondaries advisory teams at investment banks, independent advisory firms and placement agents, as well as valuation advisory practices that support pricing and fairness work. According to Mergers & Inquisitions, PCA groups advise LPs on selling stakes in private equity funds and advise PE managers on selling assets into continuation funds.
The realistic feeder pools are investment banking M&A, financial sponsors coverage, private funds groups and placement, valuation and fairness opinion teams, secondaries investing, and corporate finance roles with transaction exposure. A candidate coming from sell-side M&A may have the strongest process and modelling background, whereas a placement or secondaries candidate may arrive with better LP vocabulary and fund structure awareness.
Hiring teams screen for four things: execution stamina on live processes, modelling and valuation competence, working knowledge of GP-led secondary mechanics, and the ability to discuss conflicts and LP economics without sounding scripted. The last point matters because the advisory role is as much about process credibility as it is about model output.
| Role | Core activity | Recruiting relevance |
|---|---|---|
| PCA / continuation fund advisory | Structures, prices and executes GP-led secondaries and continuation vehicles | Direct target |
| Sell-side M&A | Runs company sale processes for corporate and sponsor clients | Strongest technical feeder, weaker on fund structure |
| Financial Sponsors Group | Covers PE clients across financing and transactions | Sponsor relationship fluency |
| Private Funds Group / placement | Raises blind-pool primary capital for managers | LP coverage and fundraising context, less execution |
| Valuation and fairness opinion advisory | Supports independent price validation and governance | Directly relevant to price discovery work |
| Secondaries investing | Buys LP interests and underwrites GP-led assets | Buyer-side view of pricing and demand |
Two distinctions matter in interviews. LP-led secondaries involve investors selling existing fund interests, while continuation funds are GP-initiated transfers of assets into a new vehicle managed by the same sponsor. PCA is not uniform either: some groups include primary fundraising alongside secondaries, while others separate the two entirely, so ask before you assume.
Juniors on these teams build the material that supports a price and a decision. That includes asset-level valuation packs, buyer return cases, rollover economics comparing sell proceeds against continued exposure, LP election materials, buyer process trackers, sensitivity cases and governance memos for the Limited Partner Advisory Committee (LPAC).
Seniors design the process, select and sequence buyers, negotiate terms beyond price, and manage the conflict narrative with the GP, the LPAC and counsel. The adviser is also expected to be accessible to LPs, and ILPA recommends that the GP disclose adviser conflicts and commercial arrangements. In practice, the technical work and the governance work are linked, because the model is only useful if LPs can understand how the price was established and how their election affects their economics.
Grant Thornton cites global secondary deal volume of $162 billion in 2024, with GP-led deals accounting for 44% of the total, attributing the figures to BlackRock. BNP Paribas, citing Jefferies data, reports GP-led secondaries volume of $28bn in H1 2024, up 56% year on year, with $47bn in H2 and total GP-led volume up 44% versus 2023. It also says continuation fund transactions account for close to 90% of GP-led volume.
Keep the scopes separate. Total secondaries, GP-led secondaries and continuation funds are three different numbers, and conflating them in an interview is an easy way to lose credibility.
Grant Thornton points to a 2024 landmark: a $3 billion continuation fund for Alterra Mountain Capital, a leading ski resort operator, where the sponsor sought to extend ownership to capture continuing growth. It is described as one of the largest single-asset continuation vehicles to date. The example is useful because it shows why a sponsor might prefer a continuation fund to a forced exit when it believes the asset still has value creation runway.
That sequence is close to M&A in its use of materials, buyer outreach and bid comparison, but the governance overlay is sharper. The transaction is being sold as optionality for LPs, yet the same sponsor is setting up the buyer vehicle and managing the asset after the transfer.
The GP is buyer and seller. It sets the reference valuation, selects the adviser, recommends the price to its own investors and stands to earn fees and carry on both sides of the timeline. ILPA treats these transactions as conflicted by nature and recommends early LPAC engagement, disclosure of rationale and conflicts, an experienced adviser, a competitive process, third-party price validation and adequate election time.
Advisers exist partly to supply that discipline. They also have their own commercial incentive. Kastiel and Nili observe that advisers can earn fees when assets move into a continuation fund and again when the continuation vehicle eventually exits, which means the party validating the process can also benefit from more of it.
Say that carefully in an interview. Third-party valuation, independent appraisal and fairness opinions support process credibility and can mitigate perceived conflict, but none of them removes the structural tension. Candidates who treat a fairness opinion as a clean answer signal that they have read a summary rather than thought about the trade.
Worked illustration. Assume a legacy fund holds an asset marked at 100. Competitive bids clear at that reference, a lead buyer underwrites to a target return over a five-year hold, and the continuation vehicle charges fees and carry on the new basis. A selling LP takes 100 today. A rolling LP keeps exposure to upside above 100 but pays carry twice: once crystallised at the transfer, and again on gains in the new vehicle. State the assumptions, run the comparison, then explain why an LP with liquidity needs or no capacity to re-underwrite a single asset still sells.
Do not claim continuation fund deals you have not worked on. Reframe what you have, especially if your background gives you part of the skill set but not the full product vocabulary.
Expect questions such as: explain a continuation fund in plain English, why would a GP choose one over a trade sale, why are the conflicts sharper than in normal M&A, how do roll-or-sell elections work, what does a secondary buyer underwrite that a primary investor does not, and how is PCA different from placement.
First 30 days: read the ILPA continuation fund guidance and the CFA Institute report until you can explain roll-or-sell mechanics, LPAC review and price validation without notes.
Next 30 days: rebuild a generic GP-led process end to end and build a simple model comparing sell proceeds against rollover economics under a fee and carry reset.
Final 30 days: network across PCA, secondaries investing, sponsors coverage, valuation and private funds teams, and rehearse the conflict discussion until it sounds like judgement rather than recall.
The seat rewards people who can hold two ideas at once: the adviser supplies the price discovery and process discipline that makes a conflicted transaction defensible, and the adviser’s fees grow with the volume of those transactions. Candidates who can name that tension, and explain how competitive bidding, LPAC review and third-party validation reduce without eliminating it, sound like practitioners.
Get it wrong and the failure mode is specific. A candidate who talks only about LBO mechanics will be read as an M&A analyst who learned a new word, and PCA teams have enough of those applying already.
P.S. If you are preparing for secondaries or PCA interviews, check out our Premium Resources for LBO and fund models, Excel skill tests and more tools to help you advance your career.
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