Coller Capital has closed a GP-led secondary transaction worth 229 million yuan ($31.5 million) in partnership with GSR Ventures, according to a company statement on Monday.
The investment comprises eight of Coller’s assets in the consumer and tech sectors in China, with its RMB secondaries fund leading the deal. Alongside Coller Capital and its co-investors, GSR Ventures is also committing a significant amount of capital to the transaction.
The deal was a complex, multi-asset GP-led transaction that required a highly structured liquidity solution tailored to the specific needs of the selling fund managed by GSR Ventures, its limited partners (LPs), and the portfolio companies, per the announcement.
A GP-led secondary transaction is a type of exit where the fund manager initiates a sale of one or more of its portfolio companies in a fund to a new vehicle — also called a continuation fund (CV ) — formed by a new set of LPs. This allows the manager to return cash to current LPs. Besides, these transactions also prolong the holding period for the GP, helping the fund manager hold onto high-quality assets to maximise their value rather than sell them off at the end of the fund’s life.
“The Chinese secondaries ecosystem has matured rapidly over the past few years, resulting in increased transaction opportunities for quality assets,” said Peter Kim, partner and head of Asia and RMB at Coller Capital, in the statement.
In 2023, Coller closed a RMB-denominated GP-led transaction with Legend Capital, worth 315 million yuan ($43.4 million) and comprising six healthcare assets. The deal was its first from its RMB secondaries fund, which launched the same year, targeting a corpus of 1.5 billion yuan ($206.8 million).
Founded in 1990 with headquarters in London, Coller has exclusively focused on secondary investing since inception and today boasts one of the largest dedicated investment teams in the asset class. It currently manages $36 billion in private equity, private credit, and other private market vehicles.
GSR Ventures, based in Menlo Park, California, with a focus on China investments, is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage technology companies. GSR Ventures was the first institutional investors in ride-hailing giant DiDi and social media platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote. It currently manages about $3 billion in a combination of USD and RMB-denominated funds.
