Strategic Partners Fund Solutions

Strategic Partners Fund Solutions

Strategic Partners Fund Solutions traces its roots to 2000, when it was founded within Lehman Brothers' investment management division. The firm survived the 2008 bankruptcy of its parent through a management-led acquisition backed by Blackstone, which purchased Lehman's private equity fund-of-funds and secondaries business. Today, it operates as a dedicated secondaries platform within Blackstone Strategic Partners, a business line that also includes hedge fund solutions and GP stakes investing. This origin story explains its unusual dual capability: managing historically acquired Lehman legacy portfolios while simultaneously raising and deploying new, scaled secondaries vehicles. The firm's investment strategy spans the full secondaries spectrum. Its flagship vehicles acquire seasoned limited partner positions in buyout, growth equity, venture capital, and infrastructure funds from institutional sellers seeking liquidity. On the GP-led side, Strategic Partners underwrites continuation funds, tender offers, and strip sales, often serving as the anchor or lead investor. Confirmed transactions include leading the $2.6 billion continuation vehicle for Francisco Partners' Agiliti in 2019 (per Secondaries Investor, 2019) and anchoring a multi-billion-dollar GP-led process for Warburg Pincus in 2020 (per Bloomberg, 2020). The firm invests across North America, Europe, and Asia, with particular depth in US and Western European mid- to large-cap buyout fund interests. Strategic Partners has raised successive flagship funds at increasing scale. The firm closed Strategic Partners Fund VIII at $22.2 billion in January 2023, then the largest secondaries fund ever raised (per Blackstone, January 2023). That record was subsequently broken. The broader Blackstone Strategic Partners platform manages over $70 billion in investor capital. The team is led by Verdun Perry, Global Head of Strategic Partners, who has overseen the platform's expansion across LP and GP-led secondaries for over a decade. The January 2023 close of Fund VIII capped a fundraising cycle that meaningfully extended the firm's capacity for multi-billion-dollar single-asset continuation vehicles. Strategic Partners' structural differentiator is its ability to co-underwrite transactions with Blackstone's direct investment business lines. When a GP-led deal involves assets in sectors where Blackstone's private equity, real estate, or credit teams have deep operational knowledge, the secondaries team can tap internal diligence resources unavailable to independent secondaries firms. This information advantage, combined with balance sheet co-investment capacity from Blackstone's parent entity, allows Strategic Partners to commit on scale and timeline terms that fundamentally alter competitive dynamics in the secondaries market. No pure-play secondaries manager can replicate this model.