The Summer That Wasn't Slow

What an unusually active summer tells us about where capital and talent are headed next.

August has a reputation in our industry. Calendars thin out, executives disappear to the beach or Europe, and searches that felt urgent in June can suddenly wait until after Labor Day.

Not this year.

At a recent dinner with several senior investors, the conversation quickly turned to just how unusually busy August had been. Deals were moving, decisions were being made and vacations were being interrupted.

We had been seeing the same thing from our side of the table. Clients remained focused, candidates stayed engaged and searches continued to move. This summer alone, Highridge launched eight new senior-level searches across real estate, private markets and digital infrastructure.

Our experience isn't happening in isolation. Executive searches opened in the second quarter increased 15% year over year to their highest level since early 2022. Private-equity-backed search demand rose even faster, up 26%.

What is driving the activity?

Capital is moving: U.S. commercial real estate transaction volume reached $293 billion in the first half of 2026, up 31% year over year, while private credit raised more than $132 billion globally in the first half.

Capital is also becoming more concentrated among larger funds. That creates both opportunity and pressure. But raising the capital is only the beginning. Someone has to invest it. And increasingly, firms are looking beyond the sectors and strategies where they have traditionally invested.

Consider Living. What was once primarily a multifamily conversation is expanding to include senior housing, build-to-rent, student housing, workforce housing and other specialized residential strategies. U.S. senior housing transaction volume alone increased 96% in the first half of 2026.

For some firms, the response is to build or acquire platforms that give them the expertise, relationships and operating capabilities to access these sectors and deploy capital at scale. But capital can move faster than expertise can be built.

Digital infrastructure is perhaps the clearest example. Data-center transaction volume increased 204% year over year in the first half of 2026, while AI, power constraints and rapidly changing development requirements continue to reshape the sector.

The competition for experienced talent is intense. In our own work, the strongest data-center executives are rarely considering just one opportunity. Many are being pursued by multiple firms at once. We’re seeing versions of that dynamic across the sectors where we work.

Capital creates the opportunity. Talent determines whether firms can capture it. And when the talent required to execute a strategy is scarce, competition intensifies.

The data bears that out. The median time to identify the candidate ultimately hired fell to 18 days in Q2, while the period between identification and close stretched to approximately 89 days. In other words, firms are finding the right people faster but taking longer to close them.

The best executives have options, and counteroffers are real. Compensation matters, but so do scope, culture, autonomy and the opportunity to build something meaningful. For clients, that means being clear about what they are offering and ready to move when the right person emerges.

Perhaps the most important takeaway from this summer is simple: Capital is moving faster than expertise can be built. That tension helps explain why hiring remained so active through the summer, and why we expect competition for talent to remain intense this fall.

It is particularly visible in digital infrastructure, where one increasingly important constraint may reshape not only where capital goes, but eventually where talent goes too: power.

More on that in our next Peak Perspective: Power Is the New Location.

For now, one thing seems clear: so much for the summer slowdown.