‘The secret world of secondaries’: How a niche area of finance is emerging as a new liquidity engine in the Gulf

In recent years, the Gulf’s secondaries market has started transitioning from a niche area of finance to an increasingly important allocation channel for capital. With traditional exit pathways, such as IPOs, seeing a notable slowdown, secondaries have become an increasingly appealing route to liquidity for investors in the region amid tougher fundraising conditions and slower exits. Secondaries refer to the buying and selling of pre-existing investor commitments and ownership stakes in private equity and VC funds, which makes it harder to obtain data on them. However, Gulf secondary-market turnover on Bloomberg’s electronic markets platform almost doubled from $22 billion in 2022 to $40 billion in 2025, while issuance increased from $246…