A credible valuation regime, grounded in procedural clarity and technological capability, is indispensable to investor fairness, systemic resilience, and the legitimacy of private markets.
A new paper from EDHEC Infra & Private Assets highlights why expanding private markets require more timely, transparent, and disciplined valuation.
Since the global financial crisis, institutional investors have undertaken a structural reallocation toward private markets, driven by persistent yield compression in public assets, a search for diversification, and cautiously increasing confidence in governance and valuation practices for alternative investments.
According to Gallary (2024), institutional portfolios have steadily increased exposure to private equity, infrastructure, and private credit, reflecting a long-term shift in strategic asset allocation designed to enhance outcomes for defined contribution and pension participants. Industry analyses by (McKinsey, 2024) and (Bain and Company, 2025) indicate that global private market assets under management (AUM) surpassed USD13 trillion in 2023, growing at double-digit annual rates since 2010. With Pitchbook (2025)’s recent industry projections, global private capital assets under management are expected to reach around USD18.7trillion by 2025 and grow further to approximately USD24.1 trillion by 2029.
This trajectory underscores how large private markets have become relative to public markets and strengthens the case for treating valuation governance as a matter of systemic importance rather than a narrow technical concern. Together, these findings underscore the mainstreaming of private markets as a central pillar of institutional investment worldwide.
As private assets assume this systemic importance, the credibility of their valuations becomes equally critical. Timely and accurate valuation is not an accounting technicality but the operational expression of fairness, fiduciary duty, and systemic safety. Without regular, transparent updates, private markets risk substituting judgment for discipline and opacity for accountability. Frequent, well-governed fair-value assessments are therefore essential not only for accurate reporting but also for sustaining confidence in the legitimacy and resilience of the private asset ecosystem.
