Despite a slow start to 2013, the market for second-hand private equity fund stakes rebounded in the second half of the year to reach another record high of $27.5 billion, up from $25 billion in 2012, according to private equity advisory firm Cogent Partners. Can the momentum keep going in 2014?

Traditional sales of interests in funds accounted for around $21 billion of the deal volume last year, while more creative deals such as secondary directs, where a fund manager sells the underlying assets of a fund as a whole, rather than the piecemeal sale of each company; fund recapitalisations, where a secondary investor provides fresh capital to keep a firm going; and spin-outs, accounted for the rest.