1. What Private Capital Advisory actually is

Private Capital Advisory (PCA) is a distinct advisory discipline built around private markets rather than public ones, and it covers three related services. Fund placement helps private fund managers (General Partners, or GPs) raise capital from institutional investors (Limited Partners, or LPs) such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. Secondary advisory runs sale processes when an LP wants to exit a private fund position before it matures, since no public exchange exists for that kind of trade. It also covers the GP side of the same market, when a fund manager wants to move prized assets into a new vehicle through a continuation fund. GP capital advisory helps a fund manager's own management company raise capital for itself, typically by selling a minority stake to an outside investor.

2. The secondary market is growing faster than almost anything else in finance

Secondaries, the trading of existing stakes in private funds, had a record 2025. According to William Blair's Private Capital Advisory team, global secondary volume reached $220 billion, up 42% year over year, outpacing the 37% growth in global M&A and roughly matching a 44% surge in IPO activity. The market has effectively doubled since 2023, and William Blair's survey respondents now project $250 billion in volume for 2026, with some insiders forecasting $400 billion by 2030.

The growth is remarkably balanced. GP-led and LP-led volumes were roughly even in 2025, at $110 billion each. Within GP-led activity, single-asset continuation funds jumped 76% to $60 billion, while multi-asset continuation funds grew 25% to $40 billion. Fundraising dedicated specifically to secondaries strategies hit a record $95 billion in 2025, on top of a further $17 billion in the first two months of 2026 alone, leaving specialist secondary investors sitting on $248 billion of dry powder. As a share of all private capital raised, money earmarked for secondaries has risen from just 3% in 2021 to 10% in 2025, a structural shift in how the industry allocates capital.

Europe is a meaningful part of this story for the first time. William Blair's 2026 report tracked the European secondary market separately for the first time, recording roughly $60 billion in 2025 volume, split $31 billion GP-led and $28 billion LP-led, with the UK alone accounting for 34% of the European total. Insiders expect the European market to reach roughly $70 billion in 2026.

3. The Lazard–Campbell Lutyens deal

Against that backdrop, Lazard announced a definitive agreement on 30 April 2026 to acquire Campbell Lutyens, a global private capital advisory firm, in a deal worth up to $660 million in total consideration: $460 million initial, based on Lazard's share price at announcement, $115 million deferred to the second anniversary of closing, and up to $85 million in earn-outs tied to performance and retention. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2026.

The combined business, to be branded Lazard CL, will become Lazard's third global business line alongside Financial Advisory and Asset Management. Campbell Lutyens is the older and, by some measures, larger of the two firms being combined. It was founded in 1988, fifteen years before Lazard built its own Private Capital Advisory group in 2003.

Once combined, Lazard CL will span roughly $500 million in projected 2027 revenue, over $190 billion in capital raised across 2024 and 2025, and 280-plus professionals across eighteen cities.

4. What lies ahead

Beyond the near-term integration questions, three structural trends look set to keep shaping the space. First, private markets are opening to a much larger pool of capital. A 2025 executive order directed U.S. federal regulators to review rules restricting alternative investments, including private equity, private credit, and real estate, from retirement plans, part of a broader democratisation of alternatives that could meaningfully expand the addressable market for firms like Lazard CL and its rivals. Second, the global alternatives market itself is forecast to grow from roughly $20 trillion in 2025 to $32 trillion by 2030, according to Preqin data, meaning secondaries have a structurally larger pool of aging private assets to draw from for years to come. Third, the secondary market is expanding well beyond its traditional private equity roots into private credit, infrastructure, and real estate, broadening the base of assets that can eventually flow through exactly the kind of advisory platform Lazard, Evercore, and their peers are now racing to build.

For now, the consolidation wave and the underlying secondaries boom are reinforcing each other. Bigger platforms are being built specifically to capture a market that keeps getting bigger. Whether that results in genuinely better outcomes for GPs and LPs, or simply a more concentrated set of advisors capturing the same growing pie, is the question worth watching over the next few years.