A private board's guidelines are not a binding valuation rule

The record

The International Private Equity and Venture Capital Valuation Board publishes its own Valuation Guidelines, the document most fund administrators cite when marking venture and private equity holdings to Fair Value. The current edition was published 11 December 2025, superseding December 2022, and is considered in effect for quarterly reporting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2026, with early adoption encouraged. The Guidelines' own preface calls themselves recommendations representing current best practice, prepared by the IPEV Board, whose stated objective is guidance that helps practitioners comply with accounting and regulatory requirements that exist independently of the Guidelines. This reflects the document as retrieved on 16 September 2026.

What the sources establish

The text states plainly that financial reporting standards do not require the Guidelines be followed, and that where they conflict with an applicable law, regulation or accounting standard, the other authority takes precedence: a standard-setting board describing its own output as advisory. The document also sets out a calibration principle: when an initial investment's price is deemed Fair Value, the techniques expected to be used later are first tested against inputs as of the investment date so they reproduce the entry price, then carried forward with updated inputs at each later Measurement Date. The Guidelines page shows the document revised repeatedly rather than issued once, with editions in 2012, 2015, 2018, 2022 and 2025. The Board's governance page states its objective as assisting compliance with requirements that exist apart from the Guidelines themselves.

Scope and revision

The Guidelines apply across the Private Capital Funds the Board names: venture, buyout, growth capital, infrastructure and credit. They are not an accounting standard, statute or regulator's rule; a fund's actual obligations come from IFRS or US GAAP, and the Guidelines say they were built to be compatible with both. The 2025 edition carries a stated adoption window rather than immediate universal effect, so a mark made under the prior 2022 edition is not automatically wrong, and a reader cannot assume which edition a given fund adopted without being told.

The decision in front of you

This is editorial, not legal advice: when a report cites the Guidelines to support a Fair Value mark, treat that as a reference to a voluntary framework a manager chose to apply, not proof any specific accounting standard was satisfied. An analyst comparing marks across managers should ask which edition was used and when it was adopted, since calibration under an older edition can produce a different mark than the same facts run through a newer one.

• Which edition of the Guidelines does the manager say it applied, and as of what reporting date?
• Does the fund's own accounting framework actually require the outcome attributed to the Guidelines?
• Was the most recent financing round's price used as a calibration input, and what adjustments were disclosed?

A Guidelines citation tells a reader a manager followed a named, published methodology; it does not say which edition, which technique, or how calibration was performed, and those gaps are where two funds' marks on the same company can differ.