Held from June 21–29, London Climate Action Week (LCAW) 2025 brought together over 45,000 participants across 700+ events, emphasizing London’s role as a global hub for climate finance and leadership. As geopolitical uncertainty clouds climate ambitions, this year’s event signaled a broader market pivot: investors are now prioritizing regions with regulatory clarity and policy momentum, namely Europe and Asia.

A joint survey from Bain & Company and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, released during the week, found that 75% of global firms now prefer to invest in Europe or Asia for climate-related initiatives. Over half reported a declining appetite for U.S.-based projects, citing inconsistent federal climate policies and rising political risk.

Policy Signals from the UK

UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband used the event to announce a bold step forward: the government will invest £30 billion annually in clean energy infrastructure through 2035. His remarks positioned the UK as a “clean energy superpower,” with a dual focus on energy security and economic renewal.

He also outlined plans for new corporate sustainability reporting standards, a move intended to improve transparency, build investor confidence, and ensure alignment with the UK's net-zero targets. These commitments were part of the UK’s post-Brexit green industrial strategy, distinguishing it from recent ESG policy slowdowns in Brussels and Washington.

Climate Finance and Market Confidence

One of the most prominent themes throughout the week was capital mobilization. At the “Finance Live” forum, asset managers, banks, and insurers debated how to align their portfolios with net-zero goals while navigating geopolitical instability and rising greenwashing scrutiny. Key discussions included scaling blended finance vehicles, investing in transition technologies, and strengthening ESG data governance.

Meanwhile, sessions like the Nature Hub spotlighted biodiversity and natural capital, moving beyond carbon to more holistic definitions of environmental value. This reflects a growing consensus that an effective climate strategy must include nature-based solutions and ecosystem restoration.

The Broader Message: A Shift in Global Climate Leadership

While the U.S. backtracks on core climate regulations, London and Europe are entering a leadership void. For global investors, that means that developing a climate strategy now includes not only where to invest but also where to trust. In that context, LCAW 2025 offered both policy and finance updates and a credibility reset.

The takeaway is clear: in an age of fragmented regulation and climate politicization, market trust flows towards stability. London Climate Action Week didn’t just reflect that shift; it helped define it.

SESAMm’s AI Technology Reveals ESG Insights

Discover unparalleled insights into ESG controversies, risks, and opportunities across industries. Learn more about how SESAMm can help you analyze millions of private and public companies using AI-powered text analysis tools.

SESAMm is pleased to welcome Guy Gresham to its Advisory Board. A globally recognized capital-markets strategist and former Group Head of Global Investor Relations Advisory at BNY, Guy brings more than two decades of experience in global financial services, specializing in equity capital markets, investor relations, and sustainability. Originally from New Zealand and now based in New York, he has deep expertise in regulatory compliance, ESG governance, and aligning global standards with business operations. His presence in North America will further strengthen SESAMm’s footprint in the U.S. market at a time of rapidly evolving expectations around sustainability and reputational risk.

"Guy’s experience advising companies across more than 50 countries, combined with his understanding of the North American market, brings a tremendous amount of insight and credibility,” said Sylvain Forté, CEO of SESAMm. “He has a remarkable ability to bridge sustainability, regulation, and capital-markets strategy, and we’re delighted to welcome him to our advisory board.”

During his time leading BNY’s Global Investor Relations Advisory group, Guy oversaw a global team supporting issuers across multiple markets and guided companies through major shifts in regulation, geopolitics, and capital markets expectations. As co-chair of BNY’s enterprise ESG Advisory Council and the Sustainable Client Solutions Working Group, he advised executive management on governance and regulatory requirements, embedding sustainability into core decision-making and risk management.

Today, Guy sits on the advisory committee of Sedex, a leading global supply-chain sustainability data platform, and serves as a non-executive director at Strategy&Ops, an international consultancy focused on sustainability and digital transformation. He holds an MBA from Cornell University, a BA (Hons) in International Relations from Victoria University of Wellington, and is a 2026 Digital Statecraft Fellow at Cambridge University.

“The growing convergence of sustainability, regulation, and technology is reshaping how companies engage with investors and manage risk,” said Guy Gresham. “SESAMm is at the forefront of this transition, using advanced AI to surface insights that were previously inaccessible. I’m delighted to support the team as they scale these capabilities globally.”

We’re thrilled to welcome Guy to SESAMm’s Advisory Board and look forward to working together as we continue advancing AI-powered ESG and reputational risk analysis worldwide, including expanding our partnerships and presence across North America.

SESAMm’s AI Technology Reveals ESG Insights

Discover unparalleled insights into ESG controversies, risks, and opportunities across industries. Learn more about how SESAMm can help you analyze millions of private and public companies using AI-powered text analysis tools.

The private markets secondaries space has entered a new chapter. What was once a niche corner of alternative investments, used primarily by limited partners (LPs) seeking early exits from fund commitments, has grown into one of the most dynamic segments of global private capital. The market has tripled in size since 2019 and grown by approximately 50% between 2024 and 2025 alone, reaching an estimated $230 billion in annual transaction volume and now representing around 5% of all global private equity assets under management. 

This piece examines the forces behind that expansion, the structural shifts redefining the market, and the operational and regulatory challenges participants will need to navigate as the asset class continues to scale.

Market Growth and Shifting Deal Dynamics

Several converging factors have driven the secondaries market to its current size. A prolonged slowdown in IPO activity and traditional exits has created a liquidity bottleneck across private markets, leaving many LPs over-allocated to alternatives and constrained in their ability to make new commitments. The secondary market has become a primary mechanism for these investors to rebalance portfolios and free up capital.

Deal structuring has grown more sophisticated in step with market volumes. Ropes & Gray has observed a continued expansion in the use of purchase price deferrals and earnouts, and more recently, the introduction of deal-specific funding caps, limits on how much capital a buyer can be called to deploy before a specified date. These mechanisms allow sellers to achieve higher reference-date pricing while enabling buyers to manage capital deployment pacing and portfolio composition. In Q1 2026 alone, institutions initiated new secondary sales processes totaling north of $20 billion, some linked to denominator effect concerns as declines in public market portfolios pushed private allocations above target levels. Whether this proves a sustained driver of supply will depend on how institutional portfolios weather current market conditions.

The Three Transaction Types

Secondary transactions fall into three main categories: 

• LP-led transactions, the original form, involve an LP selling existing fund interests, sometimes across a broad portfolio of hundreds of positions, typically through competitive auction processes with tight timelines. 
• GP-led continuation funds, the fastest-growing segment, involve a sponsor transferring select assets into a new vehicle, giving existing LPs the option to cash out or roll forward. As of 2025, GP-led and LP-led volumes are roughly evenly split at around $115 billion each. GP-led buyout fund volume grew 39% year-over-year, while private credit secondaries saw nearly 300% year-over-year growth in GP-led activity. 
• The third category, structured solutions, provides capital to a GP collateralized by existing fund assets and can take a wide variety of bespoke forms.

What Are the Operational and ESG Challenges in the Market?

One of the defining challenges in secondaries is the speed and scale of due diligence required, particularly in LP-led transactions. Buyers may need to evaluate hundreds, or in private credit secondaries, over a thousand, underlying positions with limited information and within windows of 24 to 48 hours. As Jessica Huang, Managing Director and ESG lead for private equity and secondaries at Ares Management, noted in a recent webinar:

Against this backdrop, LP expectations around ESG integration have risen sharply. LPs are now holding secondaries to a standard closer to that applied to direct investments, with requests for Article 8-classified funds, look-through exclusion lists, and UN Global Compact compliance screening becoming more common. Main exclusion categories include fossil fuels, controversial weapons, tobacco, and gambling, though definitions and revenue thresholds vary significantly across mandates. SFDR 2.0, currently in draft form, may introduce additional mandatory exclusion categories that managers are monitoring closely. In LP-led deals where buyers are inheriting a broad portfolio of assets, highly granular opt-outs can mean missing certain large transactions, a trade-off that must be clearly communicated to LPs.

The Role of Technology and AI

Technology has become central to the scaling of secondaries operations. AI tools are now applied across controversy screening, ESG data analysis, and emissions estimation, where direct disclosures are unavailable. A particular challenge in the asset class is coverage: many underlying companies are small or mid-market private businesses not captured in conventional databases.

Market participants consistently emphasize that AI outputs serve as inputs to human judgment, not as replacements for it. At Ares, screening results are reviewed by ESG specialists before being passed to deal teams for final decisions.

What the Future Holds

Transaction volumes are forecast to continue rising as both the seller and buyer universes expand. Private credit, infrastructure, and structured secondaries all represent areas of growing specialization and regional expansion, particularly in Asia, where secondary activity has been limited but is expected to grow as investment programs mature, broadening the market further. Capital supply dynamics bear watching: while dry powder remains substantial, deal volume growth has outpaced fundraising since 2023, which could create pricing or capital constraints. The entry of retail investors through evergreen vehicles adds a meaningful new source of capital but brings different liquidity expectations and regulatory considerations.

On the operational side, the sophistication of deal terms, the complexity of ESG compliance, and the volume of data processed per transaction are all increasing. Firms that can integrate technology into their diligence and monitoring workflows, while preserving the human judgment layer, will be best positioned to manage market growth. Secondaries are no longer a supplementary liquidity tool; they have become a structural feature of how private markets operate.