Private markets vs public markets: is the line still where investors think it is?Private markets vs public markets: is the line still where investors think it is?

Key answer. The usual division, public means liquid and transparent, private means locked up and opaque, no longer sorts investments reliably. The number of UK listed companies fell from 2,429 in 2015 to 1,534 in May 2026, PE-backed firms now outnumber listed ones by roughly two to one, and a $121 billion secondaries market in the first half of 2026 provides liquidity inside private markets. Three questions separate investments more usefully than the label: what sets the price, when you can exit and who decides, and what you are entitled to know.

The labels are still useful shorthand for where a security trades. They are a poor guide to what an investment behaves like. A listed small-cap with a thin order book can be harder to sell than a position in a well-traded secondaries fund. A semi-liquid vehicle holding private assets can offer monthly dealing. Both sit on the wrong side of the usual division.

Has the line between private and public markets moved?

Yes, in both directions. Fewer companies are listed, more capital reaches private assets through vehicles that deal regularly, and liquidity has grown inside private markets.

The listed market has shrunk. The London Stock Exchange counted 2,429 listed companies in 2015 and 1,534 in May 2026, with more than 30 companies leaving or planning to leave during 2026 and only seven London IPOs in the first half of the year, Fortune reported in September 2026 using LSE data compiled by Statista.

Private ownership is now the larger pool. PE-backed firms outnumber listed UK companies by roughly two to one, and VC-backed firms by 8.7 to one, on PitchBook analysis reported by Crowdfund Insider in June 2026. A UK investor who holds only listed equities is looking at a minority of the country's substantial companies.

Liquidity has grown inside private markets. Secondary market volume reached about $121 billion in the first half of 2026, up roughly 19% on the same period a year earlier, with GP-led deals at about $65 billion and LP-led at about $56 billion, according to Evercore. Full-year 2025 volume was a record, at more than $220 billion.

Private assets now reach investors through vehicles that deal regularly. UK Long Term Asset Funds held about £7.3 billion across roughly 25 strategies by April 2026, up from £5 billion in June 2025, on Morningstar data reported by Pensions Age. Most of that money is institutional and wealth-sector, with retail take-up still limited.

Meanwhile the companies that do stay private stay longer. The median holding period for UK PE-backed companies is about 7.2 years, against 5 years in 2016, which is covered in UK private equity exits and portfolio duration.

Question 1: what sets the price?

A price set by trading and a price set by valuation behave differently, and the difference matters more than whether the asset is listed.

A traded price reflects whoever is buying and selling that day. It carries information quickly and it carries sentiment with it, so it moves on monetary policy, flows and news that has nothing to do with the company. That is useful when you need to realise a position and inconvenient when you are measured on quarterly marks.

A valuation is produced periodically, from earnings, comparable transactions, asset values or a contractual entitlement. It moves less, and it moves later. The smoothness is a property of the measurement, not of the underlying business. An investor who reads low reported volatility as low risk is reading the valuation method, not the asset.

The practical question for any investment is which one applies and who produces it. Several points are worth checking: who performs the valuation and whether anyone independent reviews it, how often it is produced and how stale it can be when you transact on it, and what happens when a secondary sale prints at a discount to the carrying value. In secured lending, the equivalent question is what the security is worth and who valued it.

Question 2: when can you exit, and who decides?

Liquidity is not a property of the market an asset sits in. It is a set of terms, and those terms differ far more within each category than between them.

Four arrangements, in rising order of how much control the investor keeps:

• Someone else's timing. A closed-end fund or a direct stake in a company returns capital when a sale or listing happens. The investor has no say in when. This is where the UK exit backlog bites.
• A fixed date. Secured lending with a defined maturity returns capital on a date known at the outset, subject to the borrower performing.
• A dealing window, subject to limits. Semi-liquid vehicles, including LTAFs, offer periodic dealing with notice periods and redemption caps. The caps exist so the fund is not forced to sell assets quickly, which means they apply exactly when many investors want out at once.
• Continuous trading, subject to a buyer. A listed security can be sold any day the market is open, at whatever price is bid. For a thinly traded small-cap, that price can move sharply against a seller of size.

The secondaries market has added a fifth route: selling a private position before the underlying exit. At about $121 billion in the first half of 2026 it is substantial, but it prices at what a buyer will pay on the day, which is the same condition a listed seller faces.

Two questions settle most of this in practice. Is the exit date known at the outset or determined by someone else's decision, and when the route is a sale to another investor, what has that route priced at recently.

Question 3: what information are you entitled to?

In listed markets, disclosure is set by rule and is the same for every holder. In private transactions it is negotiated, and what you receive depends on what the documents say and on what you asked for before signing.

The difference is not that one has information and the other does not. A listed annual report is standardised, audited and late. A private investor can often see monthly management accounts, covenant tests and the security position, which a public shareholder never sees. What the private investor loses is the enforcement around it: the standard format, the external audit, the regulator behind the filing deadline, and the ability to compare one holding against another on the same basis.

This is why the review before committing carries weight that no later analysis can replace. In listed markets you can revise your view and sell. In private ones, the documents you sign are largely the information regime you will live with. Worth settling at that point: what you receive and how often, who audits or verifies it, what happens to reporting if the business underperforms, and what you can do, contractually, if the reports stop arriving.

For how we handle this when introducing an opportunity, see How We Operate.

What does this mean for allocating?

It means sorting holdings by the three answers rather than by the label. Two positions filed under "private markets" can behave nothing alike: 90-day secured lending against stock returns capital on a known date, while a growth equity position waits for a sale that may be seven years away. Filed together, they look like one allocation. Sorted by exit terms, they are opposites.

The same applies across the line. A semi-liquid vehicle holding private assets and a thinly traded listed small-cap can sit closer to each other on all three questions than either sits to the rest of its own category.

What this does not do is make private markets safer, or public markets riskier. It changes which risks you can see. In listed markets, risk shows up as price movement you can watch daily. In private ones, much of it sits in leverage, governance, counterparty quality and whether the operator can execute, none of which prints a daily quote. Capital is at risk in both.

Where HBRD Investments operates is on the private side: real estate and infrastructure, private equity, commodities and pre-IPO. HBRD is an introducer, not an adviser, and is not authorised or regulated by the FCA. Reading the documents and taking independent legal and financial advice before committing is the investor's responsibility.