The Widening Band
Why One Number Will No Longer Describe Asian Secondary Pricing in 2026
Saint Clair Capital · Ground Truth | February 2026
The first article in this series argued that fifteen firms executed 71% of global secondary volume last year, and that Asian sell-side supply in 2026 will clear against a consolidating buyer base. That is the buyer-side half of the 2026 operating environment. The pricing side is the subject of this piece, and the logic runs in a different direction. Concentration does not imply convergence. Q1 2026 has produced four distinct pricing points in Asian secondaries, none of them substitutable for the others, and the distance between them has widened rather than closed.
The practical consequence is straightforward. Asian buyers, sellers and advisers in 2026 should stop asking what the Asian discount is. The question that matters is where in the band a specific asset sits, and why.
The four points
The four points answer four different questions, and no one of them substitutes for the others. The distance between them has widened through Q1. Allocators, sellers and advisers must calibrate against all four simultaneously, because the Asian secondary they are pricing in 2026 may belong to any of them.
Campbell Lutyens’ 2025 Flash Report, published on 27 January, recorded a global LP-led average discount of 13.9%. Four days earlier, Freshfields had advised the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority on its anchor investment in CDH Investments’ multi-asset continuation vehicle at approximately USD 500 million against USD 770 million NAV, a 36% anchor discount and the clearest transacted reference point for Asian GP-led pricing this year. In February, Private Equity Wire documented reported discounts of 40–50% on quality Chinese PE assets. Morgan Stanley Asia’s planned continuation fund, reported by DealStreetAsia in February, will produce the fourth anchor when terms are disclosed.
Campbell Lutyens’ 13.9% is a global LP-led average drawn from the full 2025 transacted tape. Its scope is global and LP-led; it speaks for the headline market at headline resolution. The CDH anchor is a single Asian GP-led CV closing, negotiated bilaterally against one sovereign anchor; it speaks for Asia and the CV segment at the resolution of one transaction. The Chinese 40–50% band is reported rather than transacted: broker commentary on quality assets that have yet to clear. The Morgan Stanley Asia reference, pending disclosure, will be the first pan-Asian platform CV print.
Why dispersion
The dispersion is structural. Three drivers sustain it through 2026.
First, jurisdictional risk discounts have diverged. China exposure is priced at a discount to SEA/India exposure that has widened through 2025. Korean domestic paper trades at its own level, reflecting the policy and tax architecture around Korean GPs. Japan, when it prints disclosed Q2 and Q3 GP-led activity, will produce a third distinct Asian point. Pricing by country is calibration to materially different underlying risks.
Second, the CV share of global volume has reached 43% in 2025 by CAIA’s count, and continuation vehicles price differently from LP-led transactions by construction. A CV is a negotiated instrument with a named anchor, a disclosed asset list and a single price. An LP-led secondary is a portfolio of stakes clearing through competitive bid. The two conventions produce different numbers for the same underlying exposure. With CVs at nearly half of transaction volume, the Asian pricing conversation cannot run on LP-led averages alone.
Third, the Asian secondary market is still in its expansion phase. Bain’s APAC Private Equity Report 2026 records regional secondary value up 41% year on year. Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer’s Q4 2025 data puts Asia LP-led volume at roughly USD 5 billion of a USD 125 billion global total, a share that remains well below APAC’s share of global PE AUM. Markets in expansion produce more dispersion. Maturity compresses bands; growth widens them.
Where Korea sits
Korean secondary pricing is the fifth point in the band — still hidden from view.
The Korean venture and growth-stage secondary market operates through a combination of subsidised institutional vehicles (KVIC carve-outs, NPS continuation-fund allocations, Ministry of SMEs programmes) and domestic specialists running against private processes. None of these channels publishes transaction-level discounts. The Korean financial-group VC secondary rings described by Bloter and Dealsite in January and February — Shinhan, KB, Woori, at KRW 100 billion plus scale — are operating, but the prices at which they clear are not disclosed.
The Korean segment of the band is therefore inferred rather than observed. A credible inference places it across a wide range: subsidised Korean buyers operate to clearance obligations, and their pricing conventions reflect those more than discount discovery; global platform buyers approaching Korean GP-led activity will price at something resembling the CDH anchor, adjusted for Korean risk and currency; the few bilateral transactions cleared through private-process routes will sit somewhere between. Until the first Korean GP-led CV closes with disclosed terms, or until KVIC publishes 2026 sub-fund selection pricing data in April, the Korean point is an educated guess.
That data gap is worth stating plainly. The four transacted or imminent points are the structural argument. The Korean fifth is the empirical frontier.
The test
Two imminent transactions will decide whether the four-point band widens further or begins to compress.
La Caisse, the rebranded Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, entered the market in February with a USD 1.5 billion China-focused PE secondary sale advised by Greenhill. The portfolio includes stakes with HSG, Warburg Pincus and Boyu. The transaction is in process through Q1 2026 and has not cleared. When it does, its clearance level will be the first sovereign LP-led disclosed reference for Greater China pricing in 2026. If La Caisse clears at 25–30%, the reported 40–50% China band compresses. If it clears at 45% or wider, the band widens.
Morgan Stanley Asia’s continuation fund, when it discloses terms, will produce the first pan-Asian platform CV reference for 2026. Its significance is that it spans jurisdictions rather than concentrating on one. A pan-Asian CV printing at, say, 28–32% would establish a regional mid-point between the CDH Chinese anchor and the global average, and the band would acquire a gravitational centre. A wider print would confirm dispersion; a tighter print would begin convergence.
Ropes & Gray’s Q1 2026 Secondaries Update, expected in mid-March, will supply the full 2025 Asian CV volume data and the first quantitative frame for the 2026 argument. Editorial timing for this piece anticipates that release.
What to do with the band
The operational discipline the band requires is asset-by-asset, not average-by-average.
Buy-side allocators building or recalibrating 2026 Asian programmes should abandon the single-number framing. A 2026 underwriting range that uses Campbell Lutyens’ 13.9% as its reference will mis-price Asian CVs; one that uses the CDH 36% anchor will mis-price LP-led stakes. The correct approach is to build sub-regional and structure-specific bands into underwriting models from the outset, with separate ranges for (i) China CV, (ii) pan-Asian CV, (iii) Korean domestic, and (iv) Asian LP-led. These are four underwriting problems, not one.
Sell-side GPs entering process in 2026 should identify which segment of the band their asset plausibly sits in before the first buyer conversation. The segment determines the buyer pool, which in turn determines the process. A Chinese CV with a single sovereign anchor behaves differently from a pan-Asian platform CV with three platform bidders, which in turn behaves differently from a Korean-domestic LP-led stake routed through subsidised channels. Processes designed against the wrong segment of the band clear late, or do not clear at all.
Advisers should counsel accordingly. Positioning a Chinese-exposed process against the global LP-led average invites the seller to expect a discount that the buyer pool will not pay. Positioning a Korean-domestic process against the CDH anchor imports a pricing convention that does not apply. The first editorial act of the adviser in 2026 is to place the asset on the band.
The four-point structure of Q1 2026 is the shape of Asian secondary pricing through the rest of the year, and if Bain’s APAC data and the Ropes & Gray Q1 update hold, into 2027. Convergence may arrive, but it will arrive through transacted prints rather than analytic consolidation. The band narrows only when La Caisse, Morgan Stanley Asia, the first disclosed Japanese GP-led and the first Korean transacted reference all print within a tighter range. Today’s market sits well outside that range.
Concentration on the buyer side, dispersion on the pricing side. The two describe the same operating environment. Allocators, sellers and advisers who underwrite, price and design against both will clear. Those who hold to single-number framing of Asian pricing, or to a 2022-style expectation of a broad competitive field on the buyer side, will be reading yesterday’s market.
Saint Clair Market Intelligence · Ground Truth: Secondaries · Article 2 of the 2026 series. Follows “The Thinning Buyer Base” (January 2026).
Sources
Campbell Lutyens, 2025 Secondaries Market Flash Report (27 January 2026)
Freshfields / ION Analytics, ADIA anchor investment in CDH multi-asset CV (23 January 2026)
Private Equity Wire, China PE secondaries set to accelerate on discounted valuations (February 2026)
DealStreetAsia, Morgan Stanley Asia PE secondary fund (February 2026)
Private Equity Insights / Benefits and Pensions Monitor, La Caisse USD 1.5bn China PE secondary (February 2026)
CAIA, Continuation Vehicle Boom: Structural Shift or Liquidity Patch (11 February 2026)
Bain & Company, Asia-Pacific Private Equity Report 2026 (February 2026)
Bloter / Dealsite, Korean financial-group VC secondary rings (January–February 2026)
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, Asia private capital Q4 2025 data and trends (Q1 2026)
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. All decisions should be made based on independent research and consultation with qualified advisors.
About Saint Clair: Saint Clair designs and builds cross-border capital infrastructure between Europe and Asia — proposing access where access is scarce, and creating structure where structure is absent. Since 2016.