Buying quality versus buying discounts

Harold discusses strategies: purchasing lower-quality portfolios at discounts and high-quality assets via CVs.

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Episode notes

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

The Goldman Sachs Alternatives Summit “convened leaders across finance, geopolitics, technology, and culture” to discuss themes driving global markets.

2025’s Alternatives Summit was about “navigating a world in flux,” as the firm’s recap of its event noted.

The event aimed to help investors cut through the noise and put together the pieces of the puzzle in a dynamic and increasingly complex world.

Alt Goes Mainstream joined the event to have unscripted conversations with Goldman Sachs Alternatives leaders to cut through the noise by unpacking key themes and trends at the intersection of private markets and private wealth.

In this special series, we went behind the scenes and interviewed six Goldman Sachs Alternatives leaders about their current thinking on private markets and how the firm has built and evolved its private markets capabilities.

This conversation was with Harold Hope, Partner, Global Head of Vintage Strategies, one of the world's largest secondary fund managers, in the External Investing Group (XIG) within Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

He is also Chair of the XIG Vintage Funds Committee and a member of the XIG Real Estate Strategies Investment Committee and the XIG GP Strategies Investment Committee. Harold joined Goldman Sachs in 1999 as an Associate in Leveraged Finance and Corporate Finance within the Investment Banking Division and moved to the Alternative Investments & Manager Selection (now XIG) private equity business in 2001. He was named Managing Director in 2006 and Partner in 2016. Prior to joining the firm, Harold worked as a financial analyst at the investment banking boutique Bowles Hollowell Conner & Co. Harold earned a BA in Economics and Political Science from the University of North Carolina.

Harold and I had a fascinating and timely conversation about the growth and evolution of the secondaries market. We discussed:

Perspectives from Harold’s early days in secondaries 25 years ago, when Goldman had raised its first $400M fund in secondaries and when the secondaries industry was doing around $2B per year in transaction volume.
How the secondaries market is vastly different from five years ago.
The evolution of innovation in the secondaries market.
Why problem-solving is a defining feature of secondaries.
What is the right skillset required to be a great secondaries investor?
Why secondaries is fundamentally a valuation oriented business.
Are secondaries returns driven by buying high-quality assets or by buying at steep discounts?
Misconceptions about continuation vehicles and how the trend of private companies staying private longer impacts CVs.
The how and the why behind Goldman’s recent acquisition of Industry Ventures and why Goldman is excited about the opportunity set in venture and growth secondaries.
Why scale matters in secondaries.
Why secondaries might not become a traded market like the bank loan market and why secondaries may not fully achieve standardization because managers may not want completely uniform standardization.
Why secondaries can be an on-ramp to private markets for private wealth investors.

Thanks Harold for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion about secondaries and private markets.

Show Notes
00:35 Welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream Podcast

01:26 Harold Hope’s Background and Entry into Secondaries

02:13 Evolution of the Secondaries Market

02:30 Drivers of Change in the Market

02:43 Innovations in the Secondary Market

04:45 Skill Sets Required in Secondaries

05:42 Valuation and Investment Strategies

07:14 Continuation Vehicles (CVs) Explained

09:27 Impact of Private Companies Staying Private Longer

10:47 Acquisition of Industry Ventures

12:01 Specialized Teams in Secondaries