Special purpose vehicles were always the sort of tool investors used only occasionally, in special circumstances. A hot deal. A founder who didn’t want 100 angels on the cap table. A one-off opportunity that didn’t quite fit inside a fund’s mandate. SPVs were the exception.
In 2025, they stopped being that. As Forbes put it
In a typical bull market, private equity sponsors exit out of portfolio assets through IPOs, strategic sales and sponsor-to-sponsor buyouts. But the 2025 deal market has proven to be neither typical nor robust. Amid tariff uncertainty, higher-than-hoped for interest rates and volatile equity markets, traditional PE exits have slowed to a crawl in 2025.
Against
In the world of venture capital, there are certain investor rights that ensure the smooth execution of exit transactions. The primary such mechanism is the drag-along provision, under which one group of stockholders agrees in advance to sell or vote their shares in a sale of the company approved by another group of stockholders and/or by the board. Drag-along provisions often include a covenant by the drag-along shareholders not to sue over a drag-along sale, often including waivers of claims for breach of fiduciary duties. But are fiduciary duties of directors too important to allow them to be waived by stockholders? A recent Delaware Chancery Court decision puts guard rails on such waivers.Continue Reading Too Big to Waive? Enforceability of Drag-Along Covenants Not-to-Sue