Doc 01 — Value & Problem Statement

A continuation close is choreography that can break mid-step.

A GP-led continuation close moves a fund's assets into a new vehicle, pays out exiting LPs, issues new units to rolling LPs, and takes in secondary-buyer capital — sequentially, not simultaneously. Today it runs over multiple weeks through lawyers and spreadsheets, and any single leg can fail mid-close. Continuum collapses the whole sequence into one atomic settlement.

The mechanics

The legs settle one after another across different parties and systems. Each leg is a separate instruction with its own timing risk. The deal is only complete when the last one clears — and there is no guarantee it will.

T+0Assets transfer old fund → new fundsettled

T+2Exiting LPs paid out in cashsettled

T+4Secondary-buyer wire delayedcounterparty funding fails to arrive on timefailed

T+?Rolling LPs receive new unitsblocked

T+?Close certifiedblocked

Three legs have settled. One has failed. The close is now stranded between two states — a legal problem, not an operational one.

Three ways it breaks

leg failureA single leg fails mid-close and the deal is stranded between two states — assets moved, but capital not fully received, or units not yet issued.

partial closeA partial close is a legal catastrophe. Unwinding settled legs is contested, slow, and costly, and counterparties dispute who bears the loss.

term leakagePer-LP roll-versus-exit terms and the secondary price leak across the syndicate, because the workflow runs through shared documents and intermediaries.

Why it matters now

$75B GP-led secondaries in 2024 — roughly 44% of a $160B market scaling toward $400B. Jefferies / Evercore 2024

multi-week typical close timeline, run through lawyers and spreadsheets with sequential, manually reconciled legs. desk research · industry practice

SEC named the GP information-asymmetry conflict and pushed a third-party fairness-opinion norm. Private Fund Adviser rule

The value Continuum delivers

Weeks → one atomic close

Assets, cash, and unit issuance settle all-or-nothing in a single transaction. No leg can strand the deal between two states.

No partial-close risk

Because settlement is atomic, there is no partial state to unwind. The close either completes in full or does not move.

Provable fairness, no leakage

Each LP's election stays sealed; the LPAC and regulator get a need-to-know disclosure window. Fairness is provable without exposing the book.

The reframing

The continuation close stops being a multi-week legal operation with failure risk and becomes a single confidential settlement event — the same primitive guarantees both atomicity and privacy.