Goldman Sachs research released this week shows that nearly 40% of family offices intend to increase allocations to both public and private equity over the next twelve months. The survey, conducted across multi-billion-dollar family offices globally, documents the most pronounced shift in asset-class preference since the 2021 liquidity peak. The move away from cash and fixed income is already underway at named accounts.

The migration is bimodal. On the public side, family offices are rotating into concentrated positions in technology, healthcare, and industrial equities with three-to-five-year horizons. On the private side, the focus is secondaries and later-stage venture, not early-stage deployment. Family offices interviewed by Goldman cited two drivers: compressed valuations in private markets following the 2022-2023 repricing, and the expectation that public equity volatility will normalize below the 18% average of the past two years. Fixed income allocations, which surged to 23% of family office portfolios in 2023, are now being unwound at an average pace of 4-6% annually.

The timing matters. Family offices typically move capital in deliberate, multi-quarter arcs. A 40% stated intention translates to $280-320 billion in aggregate flows if applied to the estimated $6 trillion in global family office assets under management. This is not retail sentiment. These are principal allocators with direct GP relationships, side-car rights, and the ability to write $25-100 million checks without committee approval. When this cohort moves, secondary pricing in private markets adjusts within sixty days, and public equity bid-ask spreads tighten in named sectors.

The secondary effect is fee compression. Family offices deploying at scale are negotiating management fees below 1.0% in private equity and demanding co-investment rights at cost. Public equity allocations are increasingly through direct indexing or separately managed accounts, bypassing traditional fund structures entirely. This is a structural repricing of access, not a cyclical negotiation. Managers who cannot offer transparency and fee flexibility will lose mandates to those who can.

Operators should watch three developments. First, secondary transaction volume in private equity, which has already increased 22% year-over-year through Q1 2025 according to Jefferies data. Second, the January 2026 LP advisory committee meetings, where family offices typically formalize allocation shifts discussed in Q4. Third, the pricing behavior of co-investment vehicles in late-stage venture, where family offices are concentrating deployment and where terms have moved 150-200 basis points in favor of LPs over the past nine months.

Alpine Asset Management, a Switzerland-based family office managing $1.8 billion, confirmed to Secondaries Investor last week that it plans to scale its private equity portfolio by 30% in 2026, with half of that growth coming through secondary purchases. That is the named-account confirmation of the survey trend. The capital is moving now, and the portfolios being built today will define family office performance through 2030.