GLIL takes thirty percent of Sølvtrans. Deutsche Bank on one side, RBC on the other — and not one valuation figure between them. This is Infrastructure Secondaries Daily. Today — a named deal with no price, and a Mayer Brown piece that finally explains why the fairness-opinion fight just got more urgent. Daniel? One tap on follow, and we'll be back in your ears before you know it. MarketScreener writes:
As part of the transaction, GLIL will acquire a 30% stake in Sølvtrans, providing liquidity to investors in Antin's Flagship Fund III. Antin maintains its majority holding alongside the company's founder Roger Halsebakk and his family.
Antin's Flagship Fund III is selling a 30% stake in Sølvtrans to GLIL. Deutsche Bank's on the sell side, RBC's on the buy side, and there isn't a single number attached. No price, no NAV, no reference date. The press line says it 'delivers liquidity' to Fund III investors. Fine, but at what mark? The release doesn't say. And look who's writing the check: GLIL, managed by Local Pensions Partnership. That's UK pension money buying 30% of a wellboat operator, so the LPs at the far end of this are pensioners. I want the valuation basis in front of me before I clap. Founder Halsebakk stays in, Antin keeps the majority — fine. But a pension fund takes a minority infrastructure stake and there's no disclosed price? Somebody agreed on a number. We just don't get to see it. We've got named advisers and parties all over this deal, but no valuation. Until there's a valuation and an as-of date, 'long-term partner for the next growth phase' tells us nothing about the price. This one's from Angel Investors Network:
In October 2025, Ares Management announced it had raised $5.3 billion for its infrastructure secondaries strategy — three times the size of its 2021 predecessor fund. That single fundraise was larger than the entire infrastructure secondary market just a few years earlier. It was a signal, not an outlier.
Twenty-five billion in 2025, up from eleven in 2023. And the Ares fund alone — 5.3 billion — is bigger than the whole market was just a few years back. Somebody's very excited. And Jefferies is projecting thirty billion for 2026 on top of that. Doubling volume says liquidity appetite is roaring. What's inside those funds? The number tells me nothing. Right — the pitch is, 'assets already built, cash flows already running.' And because it sounds safe, nobody checks the mark hard enough. Here's what bothers me. The piece leans on infrastructure being different from PE — no exit-multiple risk, long duration. Long duration is also how you justify a NAV nobody wants to stress-test. Record volume makes a great headline and says nothing about quality. This one's from Mayer Brown:
General partners (“GPs”) executing continuation vehicle (“CV”) transactions in 2026 face three converging pressures that demand unprecedented attention to process architecture. First, the vacatur of the Private Fund Advisers Rule by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in June 2024 has left the regulatory landscape in a state of principles-based uncertainty, with the general anti-fraud provisions of the Investment Advisers Act remaining fully operative but without the bright-line safe harbors that the rule would have provided.
Mayer Brown lays out three pressures on GP-led CVs this year. The third is the one that gets me: a sovereign wealth fund dragged a continuation vehicle into Delaware Chancery late last year. LPs stopped writing strongly worded letters and started filing. And it matters even more now. The Fifth Circuit vacated the Private Fund Advisers Rule back in June 2024, so those bright-line safe harbors are gone. ILPA's June 2026 guidance and litigation risk are filling the vacuum. So the fairness opinion needs real teeth now. With no safe harbor in a principles-based world, that document may decide whether your process survives a Chancery judge. Right, and timing tells you everything. Give the LPAC that opinion two weeks out and you've got a real vote. Slide it under the door with 72 hours left? That process ends up in front of a sovereign wealth fund's lawyers. Put that next to the deal we opened with: Antin selling a stake to GLIL, Deutsche Bank on one side, RBC on the other, and not one NAV reference date on the page. That's exactly the kind of disclosure gap the Mayer Brown piece says gets you sued now. This one's from Investing:
The company reported fully diluted net asset value of €158.9 per share, representing a 2.6% increase from the first quarter after adjusting for the €3.6 dividend paid in May. The presentation emphasized strong capital returns to shareholders totaling €450 million year-to-date, alongside continued expansion of the Wendel Investment Managers platform.
Wendel's H1 slides are dated July 30: net asset value of 158.9 a share, up 2.6% from Q1 after backing out the May dividend. I'll take a dated NAV any day over the undated AUM boasts I've been swatting at all week. Fee-paying assets hit 37.8 billion, up 30% year over year, while management fees rose 56%. But a lot of that came from the April acquisition of Committed Advisors rather than organic pull. Say that part out loud. And we're next door to infrastructure here. Committed Advisors is a secondaries platform — useful context, but nobody's marking a wellboat off these numbers. What catches my eye is the 450 million returned to shareholders year-to-date. Wendel's own holders get their cash back on a clean timetable. The pension LPs three funds down the stack? They're waiting on a tender at a discount. There's the mismatch, Daniel. A firm can report a crisp 39.7% fee margin at the platform level, while the assets underneath get priced whenever a secondary buyer feels like naming a date. If you follow capital flows beyond infrastructure, check out Startup Fundraising. It covers daily AI startup funding rounds, seed and Series A deals, new VC funds, and notable founders. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
We're watching for the Sølvtrans 30% stake sale to close in the third quarter.
Links to every story are in today's show notes if you want to dig into anything that caught your attention.
That's Infrastructure Secondaries Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.