Continuation vehicles are set to take half of next year's secondaries capital — and today, finally, somebody spells out who's supposed to protect the LP when the GP writes the exit. This is Infrastructure Secondaries Daily. APG takes 37.5% of NorthC — a minority slice with no price disclosed — while a due-diligence guide lays out the fairness-opinion timeline nobody's been meeting. Flight to control up top, governance mechanics underneath. We start with that Q2 digital M&A read. Tap follow so the next episode finds you. Joash Boyton, writing in Acquiry:
Q2 2026 did not deliver a broad-based M&A recovery. Headline deal value accelerated while transaction count contracted. Strategic buyers returned to the front of the market, and capital moved toward assets that provide control over compute, power, regulated access, proprietary data, distribution and critical workflows.
Acquiry's Q2 digital M&A report from Joash Boyton is out this month, and we're looking past the US$2.8 trillion H1 headline to the deal count: 10,309. The lowest quarterly figure this decade. Strip out the deals above five billion, and global value was actually down four percent. Mega-transactions accounted for 48% of all value. That concentration maps straight onto data-centre secondaries: when only the giants clear, a smaller LP stake in the same compute-and-power asset faces a much thinner buyer pool. And guess who's holding those smaller stakes? Ordinary pension LPs. Headline value's up, but the transaction count that actually gives a pensioner an exit is shrinking. Those two lines are moving in opposite directions. Boyton calls it a flight to control: buyers paying up for power, regulated access, and proprietary data. Fine for the strategics writing five-billion-dollar checks. The public pension sitting on a minority slice of the same asset gets priced off its own urgency, every time. One line from the report I'll co-sign: middle-market outcomes still work when you can prove the scarcity. Preparation decides the premium, not market momentum. Which is a polite way of saying the unprepared seller eats the discount. APG is picking up 37.5% of NorthC alongside Antin — but why take a minority slice instead of just buying the whole thing outright? Because APG gets direct exposure without having to run NorthC. Antin Infrastructure Partners first bought 100% of the company from DWS through its Flagship Fund V. That deal was announced in December 2025, according to IPE Real Assets and Data Center Dynamics. Then APG separately agreed to acquire 37.5%, acting on behalf of Dutch pension ABP and Swiss pension fund partners, with Freshfields advising on the transaction. That stake gives APG economic exposure to a platform operating 25 colocation data centres across the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, with more than 140 megawatts of secured gross grid capacity, including greenfield sites. Per Antin's announcement, that's the growth runway investors are paying for. The minority setup lets APG write a large, long-duration cheque into a hard infrastructure asset, while Antin keeps control and takes on the management responsibility. And this kind of post-close co-investment alongside a GP isn't unusual. APG used a nearly identical playbook when it bought into TenneT Germany's grid business in a consortium with GIC and Norges Bank, per Reuters. But if Antin controls the platform, how much say does APG really have? Are they just along for the ride? That's what to watch. The disclosed sources call it a 'partnership' between APG and Antin, but they don't spell out board seats or consent rights. So we'll be looking for any shareholder agreement disclosures. We do know APG has used this model before. And at 37.5%, they're large enough that Antin would almost certainly need their cooperation on any future exit or recapitalisation. That gives APG structural influence, even without day-to-day control. Angel Investors Network writes:
A GP-led continuation fund is a transaction where your fund's general partner (GP) creates a brand-new fund vehicle, sells one or more of the original fund's portfolio companies into it, and offers you two choices: roll your stake into the new vehicle at a negotiated valuation, or cash out at that same price. The GP typically stays on as manager of both the old fund and the new one.
Here's the number that matters: Adams Street puts continuation vehicles at close to 50% of 2026 secondaries capital. Half the market now involves a transaction where the GP sits on both sides of the table. And that's the first attributed market-share figure we've had on GP-leds all week — an actual percentage tied to a named source, rather than a vibe or projection. Right, the guide walks through the LPAC vote like it's a real safeguard. But it only works if members got the fairness opinion two weeks before the deadline. Out of that 50%, how many actually did? Exactly, Daniel. Now the mechanics are spelled out: roll or cash out at the GP's negotiated price, while the same GP earns fresh fees and carry on the new vehicle. The tension's out in the open. Whether the fairness opinion has teeth is the whole ballgame. And look at the pattern. In the digital M&A report we just covered, 48% of H1 value clustered in the mega-deals. Headline volume climbs while the ordinary pension LP's optionality gets thinner underneath it. Different asset, same squeeze. If infrastructure secondaries are on your radar, try The Data Center Daily — a daily briefing on AI compute, hyperscaler capex, the power grid, semiconductor supply, and energy markets reshaped by intelligence at scale. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Links to every story are in the show notes if you'd like to dig deeper. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with more tomorrow. That's Infrastructure Secondaries Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.