In recent years, PE sponsors increasingly found themselves holding portfolios with investment horizons extending beyond the intended terms of the funds that held them. That problem was exacerbated by market dislocations introduced by the pandemic, with sponsors scrambling to extend their existing PE funds to avoid selling assets at stark discounts before the economy recovers. As a result, PE sponsors have even more incentive to give forethought to the issue as they launch future funds, including planning in advance for options to address the longer lives of those investments or to expect to seek investor approval to lengthen their funds’ harvest periods. In a guest article, Ira P. Kustin, partner at Paul Hastings, outlines some tools available to private fund managers seeking to free themselves of the time constraints typically placed on them by their funds’ harvest periods. Specifically, Kustin details options for managers such as secondary sales of fund assets to third parties – including existing investors in the fund – or affiliates of the fund manager; secondary sales of fund interests themselves; “tender-offer-style” sales of fund interests by LPs to third parties, as well as the potential conflicts and regulatory concerns raised by those transactions; and a rollover of fund assets into a successor fund. See “Quest for Permanent Capital: Why Sponsors Look to Unlisted Registered Funds to Achieve ‘Functional’ Permanence Beyond Typical Private Funds (Part One of Three)” (Dec. 8, 2020); and “Liquidity Options for PE Funds: Potential Capital Sources, GP‑Led Restructurings and Alternative Paths Available to Sponsors (Part One of Two)” (Sep. 15, 2020).