Value of private market assets hits record $14.34tn in 2024
Last year the value of private market assets increased by around 9.7 per cent to a record $14.34tn (£11.53tn), excluding undeployed capital.
According to Ocorian’s Global Asset Monitor, the value of private assets has increased nearly three times as fast as public assets over the past 15 years, rising 618 per cent.
Ocorian predicts ongoing growth in private markets – driven by a combination of demand from investors and privately-owned companies. This demand for capital is strongest in the US while the supply of funds is strongest in Asia.
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The analysis of global equity and bond markets as well as private equity, infrastructure, real estate and private debt found that publicly listed assets ended the year with a market value of $232.45tn, increasing by 11.6 per cent.
The value of assets across all private market asset classes rose last year apart from real estate, which recorded a 2.5 per cent drop, while infrastructure recorded the biggest increase year on year at 12.4 per cent, narrowly ahead of private equity at 11.6 per cent.
“The increase in global assets last year is the largest on record and is the equivalent of adding two European stock markets to the global asset pile in a year. Last year’s increase equates to $2,959 for every person in the world,” said Chantal Free, chief executive at Ocorian.
“Most of the growth inevitably came from public markets as they are 16 times the size of their private counterparts. That size however is increasingly an issue with the concentration of major listed companies making it more challenging for investors to diversify.
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“This is one factor behind the growth in private markets, as well as higher returns. The bigger picture however is that private markets have outstripped public markets in terms of long-term growth and are now 618 per cent bigger than in 2009, reflecting capital inflows as well as returns.
“The private capital industry is growing rapidly to meet the needs not just of companies around the world, but also of investors for whom public markets do not hold all the answers. The potential for continued growth in private capital is substantial, especially when compared to the current scale of public markets. This growth is supported by an accumulation of global wealth, with significant pools of capital concentrated in Asia and an acute demand for capital in strategic, high-growth regions such as the United States.”
The analysis underlines the growing risk of concentration in public markets and the threat to investors looking to diversify. US stock markets accounted for 84 per cent of the global rise in stock markets last year, Ocorian pointed out, with AI chipmaker Nvidia alone contributing a seventh of the global equity increase.
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