University of California Sells $1 Billion Private Equity Book to HarbourVest at Discount
The double-digit discount lands in a market where evergreen funds built for advisors are now bidding against traditional buyers for the same LP portfolios.
August 19, 2026
The University of California’s investment office has sold roughly $1 billion of private equity fund interests to HarbourVest Partners at a discount of more than 10 percent, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the sale. Campbell Lutyens advised UC Investments, which began the process earlier this year. Neither the buyer nor the seller has announced the transaction.
The portfolio consisted mainly of stakes in software and other technology-focused buyout funds. UC Investments oversees roughly $190 billion across the university system’s retirement, endowment and cash pools, and its most recent annual report put private assets at about $39 billion of market value as of June 30, 2025. Against those figures, the sale trims a small fraction of the private book rather than signaling a retreat from the asset class.
The discount, not the dollar figure
Pricing is the more telling detail. Sales initiated by limited partners are the seller-driven half of the secondaries market, which hands buyers leverage on price, and discounts have widened again as private asset valuations have come under pressure. Volume has not suffered for it. Campbell Lutyens counted a record $225 billion of secondaries transactions in 2025, with LP-led deals the largest single driver at roughly 54 percent, or $121.5 billion of value, and expects the market to reach at least $250 billion this year.
University investment offices have supplied several of the largest of those portfolios, pushed by thin distributions from aging buyout funds and the resulting squeeze on liquidity. Harvard’s endowment reached a deal in 2025 to move about $1 billion of fund stakes to Lexington Partners.
Where the supply ends up
For advisors, the consequence sits one step downstream. HarbourVest managed $161 billion as of March 31, 2026, and has spent the past year extending a secondaries franchise built for institutions into products aimed at private wealth, adding a dedicated credit secondaries team alongside its registered closed-end fund.
It is not alone. Hamilton Lane’s registration of a dedicated private secondary fund and Ardian’s $2.5 billion US private equity secondaries offering point at the same opportunity. Because perpetual structures have to keep incoming subscriptions invested to avoid cash drag, they bid more often and more aggressively than closed-end funds working through a pacing model, and Campbell Lutyens has found that evergreen buyers pay several percentage points more of face value on average than the wider market for LP stakes.
That is the mechanism worth watching as more of these vehicles reach advisor platforms. Institutional sellers under liquidity pressure set the supply, and the price a portfolio like the University of California’s clears at is the benchmark every buyer competing for the next one has to work against.
