Zombie PE Firms

Been noticing a growing number of funds that haven’t raised fresh capital since peak market conditions (2021/early 2022 vintages) and as we start to get into 2H 2024 these firms seem to be increasingly at risk of becoming zombie firms with no hope of raising new LP dollars. Many of the assets in these funds were acquired at peak valuations with low likelihood of near term realization or positive performance long term absent a significant market rebound.

What happens to all these firms and how long can they continue to exist in purgatory of deployed capital with no fresh inflows? There doesn’t seem to be much incentive for these firms to actively wind down so long as they can clip their mgmt fees for the next 5-10 years on whatever capital base they raised in boom times. At what point do these firms become completely written off as zombie PE shops? What do investors at these funds do with their time?

Just curious on other’s commentary or discussion around this