The Bridge Ep. 20: Do Private Markets Need More Liquidity?

Summary

Khalil Hibri, co-founder of Tangible Markets, describes secondaries as an increasingly active market for LPs who need liquidity, want to rebalance portfolios, or simply want a market price for private fund interests. He says the platform has grown to hundreds of transactions, about 200 buyers, and a market structure that is becoming more competitive and segmented across credit, infrastructure, venture, growth, and other strategies. Hibri argues that better competition and more specialized buyers are tightening bid-ask spreads and improving price discovery, with some funds trading at premiums and others at meaningful discounts depending on exposure and vintage. He also highlights lending against fund interests as a parallel liquidity solution, especially when a sale does not make sense and investors want to retain upside. The episode frames secondaries and lending as signs that private markets are building more mature liquidity infrastructure for both institutional and wealth-channel investors.

Notes

• Tangible Markets is positioned as an LP-led secondary market and price-discovery platform for private fund interests.
• The company says secondary markets solve liquidity problems in private funds that are otherwise difficult to trade.
• Sonali says Tangible processes about $1 billion in annual secondary volume.
• LPs use secondaries for personal liquidity needs, portfolio reallocation, and price discovery.
• Long-in-the-tooth funds can become inefficient to hold because of opportunity cost.
• Hibri says the market has become competitive and efficient, with educated buyers no longer just lowballing sellers.
• Buyers are underwriting for returns rather than trying to shade bids aggressively.
• Reserve prices stay confidential, and only the individual seller sees bids.
• The platform is intentionally discrete, with no public price tape.
• Tangible says it has 200 buyers on platform and communicates with major secondary funds and specialist players weekly.
• Buyer relationships are active and recurring rather than episodic.
• The firm says it has handled hundreds of transactions.
• Its smallest disclosed transaction was about $7,000 in NAV.
• The smallest example involved a fund more than 12 or 13 years old and effectively at end of life.
• The largest live transaction mentioned is close to $600 million in NAV.
• Secondary pricing is becoming more specialized across strategies, mirroring the segmentation seen in primary private markets.
• Credit, infrastructure, fund-of-funds, and venture/growth are all becoming distinct secondary buyer segments.
• AI-exposed funds can trade above NAV.
• Credit and infrastructure secondaries tend to trade close to NAV.
• Competition is the main driver of best pricing in the market.
• More buyers should compress bid dispersion around a single clearing price.
• Around 40% of LPs who explore selling decide not to proceed to auction.
• About 60% of explored opportunities move into an auction process.
• Once a process launches on Tangible, around 90% or more close.
• Sonali cites Evercore data showing more than $120 billion deployed in secondary deals in the first half of the year.
• Rising buyer counts are narrowing bid dispersion.
• The auction market is disciplined, with bids clustering around one price.
• Some buyers are willing to pay more because they already know the fund well as LPs.
• New buyers include pensions, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and enterprise RIAs.
• Secondary buyer demand is expanding into wealth-channel and institutional allocators.
• Tangible's long-term goal is to move all LP-led secondary processes onto its platform.
• Hibri frames GP-led deals differently, saying they remain better suited to traditional banking-style processes.
• Private credit senior secured secondaries trade from close to par to low-teen discounts.
• Evergreen credit funds are said to track similarly to large drawdown credit funds in secondary pricing.
• Evergreen funds can use secondaries as a release valve when redemptions are capped.
• Venture and growth secondaries without AI exposure can trade at discounts above 30% and sometimes above 40%.
• Vintage matters, especially for funds that invested at peak valuations and zero-rate conditions.
• Buyers in venture and growth underwrite the winners and discount the rest heavily.
• Investors in AI-exposed venture positions may sell to reduce concentration before IPOs.
• Family offices show strong appetite for AI co-invests and SPVs.
• Lending can be preferable when a secondary sale does not make sense.
• A 20% to 30% loan-to-value package can deliver liquidity while preserving upside.
• Lending may offer tax advantages relative to selling.
• The lender's downside risk is mitigated because the secondary market exists as an exit route for collateral.
• Tangible provides quarterly pricing information to support lending decisions.
• The iCapital partnership is framed as validation that alternatives now need liquidity solutions in wealth channels.