It’s another year and the IPO window has remained steadfastly shut — which seems to be prompting more companies to consider or plan a secondary share sale in the near future.
Some 78% of tech companies said they were very likely or somewhat likely to sell secondaries — existing shares in a private company owned by investors, founders or employees — in the next 12 months, according to a new report by equity management platform Ledgy, which surveyed 2,550 respondents in private companies across Europe, the UK and the US.
Conducting secondary sales helps give shareholders liquidity as exit options remain limited. M&A in Europe had a bit of a sleepy year in 2024, and IPOs — another big liquidity event — have been largely at a standstill.
“Exits markets are still challenging across exit types,” PitchBook analyst Nalin Patel told Sifted earlier this month, adding that larger corporates “that might come in for VC assets could be grappling with their own lower growth forecasts and rising costs.”
That dynamic has also prompted more investors to eye secondaries as an opportunity: last year, several investors, including Isomer Capital and Launchbay Capital, announced funds to snap up secondaries — particularly as VCs have been under more pressure to return capital to their investors.
“Almost every late-stage tech company is either doing [a secondary sale] or talking about doing one in the US, and so I suspect that a lot of that will spill over into Europe as well,” Michael Podolny, a partner at law firm Latham & Watkins based in San Francisco, said last autumn. “I would say that we are probably experiencing the peak in the number of secondaries that we’re seeing in the tech industry ever.”
Within the fintech industry, several startups — including neobanks Revolut, Monzo and Tide — have recently done their own secondary sales.
If more secondary shares do materialise this year, it could have an even bigger impact on tech employees than in previous years: according to the Ledgy report, 82% of employees said they own equity in their company, up from 61% a year ago. In particular, tech employees in Germany have seen a massive increase in equity ownership: as of 2025, about 90% of German private company employees surveyed owned shares, up from 52% the year prior. That may be due in part to the overhaul last year of German employee stock option programmes, or ESOP, which helped ease some of the issues around taxation.
Employees are keen to take part, with 83% telling Ledgy they’d want to participate in a round — despite only 50% of employees saying they fully understand secondaries.
IPO optimism
Despite the tentative market, some companies seem hopeful that things are turning a corner: 55% of companies surveyed by Ledgy said they are more likely to IPO now, compared to a year ago.
But they likely won’t be going public in Europe: the popularity of the EU as a public debut venue has dropped nearly 4% compared to a year ago, according to the report; and the US and the UK are looking more attractive.
Though many startups look to the US to go public, respondents from the UK (84%) said they were more likely to debut at home compared to 2024 — when that figure was 72%.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/tech-secondaries-plans-2025/
