The Two Books
Why Asian Secondary Process Design in 2026 Will Decide Pricing Before Negotiation Begins
Saint Clair Capital · Ground Truth | March 2026
Article 1 of 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. Article 2 argued that the pricing side of the same environment shows dispersion rather than convergence, with four distinct transacted or imminent Asian reference points and a widening band between them. Taken together, those two pieces described the buyer-side and pricing-side shape of the 2026 market. This third piece argues that the operational consequence of both has now become visible, and that it runs through process design.
Through Q1 2026, two buyer universes have become operationally distinct in Asian secondaries. The first is the concentrated global platform cohort Campbell Lutyens measured. The second is a sovereign, policy and domestic-institutional cohort whose perimeter hardened through March: NPS’s dedicated continuation-fund and GP-stakes teams, the Korean Ministry of SMEs KRW 200 billion secondary programme, a brokerage-led KRW 2 trillion proposal under regulatory consideration, forty-two Korean BDC licences effective 17 March, La Caisse as a sovereign seller of Chinese PE stakes still in process, CIC’s closed USD 1 billion US PE tender, and Japan’s emergent domestic secondary supply channel documented by NGS Partners and WTW Japan.
The two cohorts operate to different mandates, different time horizons and different pricing conventions. They clear different processes at different levels. The practical consequence for 2026 Asian sellers is that the choice of which book a process is written to has become a first-order determinant of clearance outcome, made before adviser engagement rather than after initial buyer outreach.
The first book
The first book is the one the last two articles described. Campbell Lutyens’ 2025 Flash Report puts global secondary volume at USD 225 billion with fifteen firms executing 71% of it. EQT-Coller, announced on 22 January, brought combined AUM to USD 50 billion at close and added an Asian deployment mandate to a platform that did not previously carry one. Ares, Pantheon, Hamilton Lane, Blackstone Strategic Partners, Ardian, Lexington, HarbourVest, Goldman AIMS and a handful of others appear on the buy side of visible GP-led and LP-led Asian transactions week after week. It is a narrow cohort with deep balance sheets, global mandates and discretionary time horizons.
This book prices off a discount-to-NAV convention, clears through auction or bilateral negotiation at rates set by the buyer’s own underwriting, and transacts on the buyer’s calendar. It is the book Campbell Lutyens’ 13.9% global LP-led average and the ADIA/CDH 36% anchor discount both describe, at different segments of the band.
The second book
The second book is what 2026 added: a coherent buyer cohort assembled through a set of regulatory and institutional moves that hardened through Q1, with its own infrastructure across three tracks. Its operating features are clear; its full perimeter is still emerging.
On the Korean track, NPS formalised secondaries as a dedicated alternatives allocation on 26 January, and its USD 793 billion book has since stood up a dedicated continuation-fund team and a GP-stakes team, with a 55% equity ratio target by 2030 and no first bid yet issued. KVIC quadrupled its 2026 secondary carve-out on 23 January and has its Fund of Funds extended past 2035 with a shortened 3-to-5 year mandatory investment fulfilment rule. The Ministry of SMEs KRW 200 billion secondary programme carries a 10% mandatory LP-stake acquisition obligation. A KRW 2 trillion brokerage-led secondary fund is under KVCA consideration, anchored in the KRW 150 trillion National Growth Fund proposal. The BDC regime became effective on 17 March, with forty-two licensed managers, a 60% venture allocation requirement and a 90-day KOSDAQ listing obligation.
On the sovereign-as-seller track, La Caisse entered the market with a USD 1.5 billion China PE secondary sale advised by Greenhill in February, still in process through Q1. CIC’s USD 1 billion US PE tender, cleared in late 2025 by Goldman Sachs and Ardian at single-digit and double-digit discounts respectively, was reported in April. Both confirm that large sovereign holders are willing sellers at disclosed size.
On the Japanese track, Morrison Foerster and Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer flag Japan as the most likely source of H1 disclosed GP-led CVs, and NGS Partners’ own disclosures place Japanese domestic acquisitions at more than 80% of predecessor-fund volume for certain structures — a domestic-buyer-dominated supply channel with little international platform participation.
The second book is a separate operating system, with its own mandate logic, its own clearance conventions and its own time signature.
Four dimensions
Four dimensions separate the two books operationally.
Mandate is the first. The first book operates to a return-maximising mandate measured in IRR and multiple against a next-fundraise cycle. The second book operates to mandates that include policy outcomes, portfolio rebalancing obligations, domestic capital formation targets and regulatory calendars. NPS’s secondary allocation is part of a statutory asset-allocation framework. Korean Ministry of SMEs funds are return-conscious but clearance-obligated. La Caisse’s China sale is a rebalancing transaction.
Time horizon is the second. The first book can wait for price, and does. The second book carries calendared obligations: BDC 90-day listing rules, KVIC mandatory investment fulfilment periods, Ministry of SMEs programme-year allocations, sovereign annual rebalancing targets. Time pressure in the second book is a different variable from in the first, and it moves in the opposite direction — the second book’s pressure is on the buy side, not the sell side.
Pricing convention is the third. The first book anchors to discount-to-NAV. The second book anchors to a heterogeneous set of conventions: NAV discount where applicable, but also par-pricing for Korean domestic venture paper (EY India’s observation that 85% of Indian secondaries price at par is an instructive adjacent case), clearance-obligation pricing for subsidised programmes, and negotiated terms for sovereign tenders where the seller is disclosing into a pre-screened bilateral. A discount benchmark imported from the first book will mis-price the second book’s processes by structural amounts.
Process design is the fourth. The first book accommodates competitive auction with data-room disclosure, buyer long-lists shortened to three-to-five platform bidders. The second book is governed by allocation rules, regulatory screens and counterparty mandates. NPS participates on its own terms, on its own timetable, outside a commercial auction. A BDC requires a structure built for domestic institutional co-investment. Process design in each book follows the book’s own rules.
Where the books overlap
Institutions span the two books. NPS is formally part of the second book, but it is also a limited partner in global secondary funds run by first-book managers and therefore indirectly present in the first. GIC and KIC run commercial mandates that place them in the first book on a case-by-case basis. EQT-Coller and Blackstone have begun to hire Asian teams with mandates that can address domestic Korean or Japanese supply. Ardian’s participation in the CIC tender alongside Goldman is a first-book platform engaging a sovereign tender structured for the second.
The distinction holds across the overlap. It forces institutions that span both to make the same choice as external sellers: which book a specific mandate is written to. EQT-Coller’s Asian mandate can be written to the first book (pan-Asian LP-led, platform CVs, cross-border tenders) or to the second book (domestic Korean BDC allocations, NPS co-investments, policy-aligned deployments), but only one at a time, at one pricing convention and through one process. The overlap is structural, and it runs through individual mandates.
Beyond the two books
The two-books frame is a reading of the Asian secondary buy side that has disclosed itself through Q1 2026. The structural buy-side space extends further. Several extensions of the disclosed pattern are conceivable: buyers with mandates, time horizons or pricing conventions that fit neither Book One’s IRR-paced logic nor Book Two’s regulatory calendar. The present data does not adjudicate between them. Whether any such extensions assemble in Asia at scale through 2026 is a question the data has yet to answer.
The discipline the frame requires is therefore twofold. Read the two cohorts that have disclosed for what they are. Hold open the possibility that the structural space extends further. The operating environment that emerges through H2 will tell us which.
The consequence
The consequence for 2026 Asian sellers is that process design begins before adviser engagement.
Adviser choice, data-room preparation, buyer-list construction, disclosure architecture, pricing expectations and counterparty screening are all downstream of the book selection. A Korean GP preparing a continuation vehicle has to decide, before the first conversation, whether the CV is written to the first book (sovereign anchor, global platform bidders, discount-to-NAV pricing, bilateral negotiation closed in a quarter) or to the second book (domestic institutional anchor, BDC or KVIC co-investment, clearance-obligation pricing, regulatory timetable). The two processes require different advisers, different disclosure standards and different diligence cadences. They run on separate rails.
For the buy side, the symmetric discipline applies. A 2026 Asian mandate that underwrites to a single book’s convention will clear processes in that book and miss processes in the other. A platform underwriting model imported into a second-book process will overstate achievable discount and understate time-to-clearance. A second-book model applied to a first-book process will misread price sensitivity and fail to compete on bilateral speed.
For advisers, book selection is the first-order act. Auction calibration follows. Positioning a second-book process against first-book benchmarks invites the seller to expect discounts and timelines the second-book buyer pool will not deliver. Positioning a first-book process through second-book channels routes the seller through allocation frictions that platforms do not carry.
The Q2 tests
Four imminent events will test the two-books thesis.
La Caisse’s China sale, if it clears inside Q2, will supply the first disclosed sovereign LP-led reference for Greater China and the first cleared transaction inside the sovereign-as-seller pattern. Its clearance level and timing will indicate whether the sovereign track prices closer to the first book’s 13.9% average or the second book’s heterogeneous conventions.
Morgan Stanley Asia’s continuation fund, when terms are disclosed, will produce the first pan-Asian platform CV reference and will test whether the first book’s platform pricing extends cleanly across jurisdictional boundaries or fragments along them.
The first NPS-originated secondary transaction, whenever it prints, will be the first data point from inside the second book with the institutional weight to set Korean domestic pricing convention for the rest of the year.
The first KOSDAQ-listed BDC product, expected in April or May, will test the hypothesis that first-cohort BDCs operate as secondary funds by default given the 60% venture allocation rule and the supply of maturing Korean venture portfolios.
If La Caisse clears in line with first-book global LP-led averages, and Morgan Stanley Asia prints at something resembling the CDH anchor, and the first NPS bid lands at a discount inconsistent with the first book’s conventions, the two-books frame hardens. If all four come in at a narrow spread, the books begin to converge and the thesis qualifies.
What the frame says
The two-books frame is a Q1 2026 reading. The domestic Korean leg rests on infrastructure that is pre-operational: NPS teams without a first bid, BDC regime effective but without a listed product, Ministry of SMEs programme funded but not yet deployed at scale, brokerage KRW 2 trillion under consideration rather than funded. The sovereign-as-seller leg rests on a small sample. The distinction between the books may prove tactical rather than structural as the market matures. Whether the structural space extends beyond the two disclosed books is a question the data has yet to answer. Honest framing requires each of these qualifications, kept in view.
The frame is also the operating environment 2026 participants have to work in. Concentration on the buyer side; dispersion on the pricing side; a buy-side that divides into two disclosed books and leaves space for further structural positions yet to disclose. The features describe the same market from different angles and resolve into a single operational discipline: read the market you are in, choose the book you are writing to, and design the process against that book’s conventions rather than the market’s averages. Where further structural positions appear, they will arrive with their own conventions, and the discipline extends to recognising them.
Sellers who do this will clear. Sellers who approach 2026 Asian secondaries as if the buyer universe were singular, or the pricing convention were singular, will be reading yesterday’s market. Two books disclosed; the space remains open: together, the operating consequence of everything the first two articles described.
Saint Clair Market Intelligence · Ground Truth: Secondaries · Article 3 of the 2026 series. Follows “The Thinning Buyer Base” (January 2026) and “The Widening Band” (February 2026).
Sources
Campbell Lutyens, 2025 Secondaries Market Flash Report (27 January 2026)
Bain & Company, Asia-Pacific Private Equity Report 2026 (March 2026)
Seoul Economic Daily, Korea launches BDC system this month (5 March 2026)
KED Global, Ministry of SMEs secondary fund framework (March 2026)
Private Equity International, Korea’s USD 793bn NPS forms dedicated continuation-fund and GP-stakes teams (Q1 2026)
Private Equity Insights, La Caisse USD 1.5bn China PE secondary (March 2026)
Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs and Ardian close CIC USD 1bn US PE tender (14 April 2026)
Asia Business Daily, KVCA KOSDAQ Activation Fund proposal (12 March 2026)
Morrison Foerster, Japan poised for GP-led secondary uptick (January 2026)
NGS Partners, Japanese domestic secondary acquisition disclosures (Q1 2026)
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, Asia private capital Q4 2025 data and trends (Q1 2026)
KoreaTechDesk, KVIC Fund of Funds extension past 2035 (March 2026)
EY India, Indian secondary transaction pricing conventions (March 2026)
CNBC, APAC PE fundraising at decade low (27 March 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.