Private market investments are now a mainstay of institutional portfolios. Yet while allocations have grown, the information available to investors has not kept pace.

That matters because many of today’s private companies no longer resemble the venture-backed startups traditionally associated with private markets. Some of these companies now rival public companies in terms of market influence and investor relevance, yet investors often have far less insight into how they are governed, who controls them, and the risks they face.

Private markets were never meant to mirror public markets. But when private companies reach the influence and complexity of major listed businesses, investors should expect a comparable level of transparency. Listing status alone is becoming a poor proxy for disclosure expectations. A company’s economic significance is a better indicator that it warrants greater scrutiny.

The Transparency Gap

Institutional investors are attracted to private markets for diversification benefits, alternative return sources, and early access to unlisted companies. Based on findings from our 2025 and 2026 Asset Owner Surveys, they continue to increase allocations to private markets, targeting allocations >20%. This tells us that private equity and private credit are playing an increasingly important role in portfolio construction.

At the same time, companies are staying private for longer. Businesses that might once have sought a public listing much earlier are now able to raise substantial amounts of capital through successive private funding rounds. As we see more institutional capital flowing into private markets, it becomes harder to justify uneven disclosure expectations based solely on whether a company is publicly listed or not.

This shift in capital is driving a transparency gap. Institutional investors can gain meaningful exposure to companies with enormous economic significance without receiving the same volume of disclosure typically available in public markets. As a result, investors are seeking independent analysis that can help assess governance, risks, ownership structures, and valuation assumptions in some of the largest private companies.

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