Spotlight: A PEI Podcast (PEI Group)

Can private capital really solve the world's biggest challenges? Is there something wrong with the way private equity funds are raised? We discuss the rise and fall of Abraaj with Simon Clark, co-author of 'The Key Man'.

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners

The Disruption Matters special podcast miniseries is back for a third season, and this year, leading industry experts discuss how private markets can best use today’s technologies to create value.

In this fifth episode, we discuss tech's role in recruiting, onboarding and developing talent. Along the way, we address how best to recruit Gen Z, the limits of AI in this particular arena and how tech is changing the nature of talent management as a discipline. With tech tackling so many of the rudimentary tasks around talent management, human capital professionals will be freed up to focus on the more complicated tasks around motivation, evaluation and leadership. In short, tech may make some duties simpler, but the key challenges of managing people will still need to be addressed by humans.

Guests include Christopher P Trendler, managing director and head of portfolio talent at Madison Dearborn Partners; Nicole Jones, talent director, portfolio support group at Advent International; John Sander, principal, portfolio solutions at Lightyear Capital; and Ted Bililies, the global leader of transformative leadership at AlixPartners. Clips - Her. Spike Jonze, Annapurna Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures - M3GAN. Akela Cooper, Universal Pictures

On day two of the PERE Europe Forum, Gibson, chief investment officer of EMEA direct real estate strategies at CBRE IM, speaks with PEI's Mina Tümay about the importance of offering flexible parental leave for employees.

At the PERE Europe Forum, PERE EMEA editor Charlotte D'Souza sat down with Brown, global head of M&G Real Estate, who argues that to take a balanced view of the market, you have to look at opportunities arising from both short- and long-term trends.

The economic bounce-back from covid came quickly, says Randy Schwimmer of Churchill Asset Management, which caused inflation to be on everyone's minds.

Energy transition investment has significantly evolved over the last 15 years, so what should investors take into consideration when deploying in the space? Matt DeNichilo, partner at Energy Capital Partners, and Alex Darden, partner at EQT, discuss the opportunities and risks.

Glennmont Partners’ CEO Joost Bergsma and Actis's head of sustainability Shami Nissan discuss how their firms approach sustainability – in theory and in practice – as well as what their LPs demand of them. They share their views on ESG, resilience and the emergence of dedicated climate allocations launched by a growing number of LPs. This episode is sponsored by Glennmont Partners and Actis

Is opportunistic credit the next big thing to watch in the asset class? What are others in the markets doing now? Bruce Tomlinson of Sunsuper and Bev Durston of EdgeHaven answer these key questions.

Our senior editorial teams covering PE, private debt, infrastructure, real estate and secondaries discuss the latest in how private markets are responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Plus: ways firms are helping people out in the crisis.

This series is sponsored by AlixPartners

The Disruption Matters special podcast miniseries is back for season three: AI and the future of value creation. This year, leading industry experts will discuss how private markets can best use today’s technologies to create value.

In this first episode, The digital promise: Threats and opportunities, we set the stage by getting a reality check around what today’s AI solutions can and can’t do. While AI-related tech has enormous potential, firms need to select their use cases wisely, tailored to the unique needs of a given business. And like any other technology, it’s only as good as its implementation, which is still governed by the timeless demands of any change management. But managers don’t have the luxury of waiting for others to develop best practices; at the current pace of innovation, there’s too great a risk of being left behind.

Guests in this episode include Jason McDannold and Hoyoung Pak, partners and managing directors at AlixPartners; David Bonasia, head of value creation for the Americas for Brookfield Asset Management’s PE business; Blythe Masters, a founding partner of Motive Partners; Ashish Chandarana, head of portfolio optimisation and partner at Veritas Capital; Luke Chan, a partner with HighVista Strategies; Michael Zeller, head, AI strategy and solutions at Temasek; and Catherine Brien, a partner and managing director at AlixPartners.

Clips: -2001: A Space Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C Clarke. -The Terminator. Hemdale, Pacific Western Productions, Euro Film Funding Cinema '84, Orion Pictures, James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd. -Her. Warner Bros Pictures, Annapurna Pictures, Spike Jonze.

Despite being plagued by headwinds including high interest rates, shrinking demand and declining property values since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, the office sector is starting to see some green shoots as usage and leasing rise. 

In this episode, Jim Costello, executive director and co-head of the real-assets team at MSCI, and Ran Eliasaf, founder and managing partner of New York-based real estate private equity firm Northwind, see growing signs of stabilization – and believe this trend is starting to extend outside of class A assets in gateway markets.  

Additionally, there is a rise in creative thinking about how to use older properties, including converting vintage office stock to other uses, and even acquiring office properties on a low basis and doing a complete renovation. 

For more insights on this, please see PERE Credit's October/November cover story here. 

Guests from PEI Group's 2023 list of influential women in alternatives look back on the past 10 years in the industry and analyse the current challenges facing it. 

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners

The Disruption Matters special podcast miniseries is back for a third season, and this year, leading industry experts discuss how private markets can best use today’s technologies to create value.

In this third episode, we will discuss life after the 100-day plan and that tricky middle period where effective portfolio management is paramount, especially if the company isn’t growing in line with expectations. Here we’ll investigate how tech and AI can be used to diagnose problems, even propose solutions, and how much the human element still matters in managing a crisis. For example, no workforce wants management relying on AI bots to sell them on a new strategic direction.

Guests include Arvindh Kumar, partner and co-head of technology, private equity at EQT; Antony Edwards, managing director at PSG Equity; Neil Kalvelage, co-lead of portfolio operations team efforts at Centerbridge; and Dan Boland, partner and managing director at AlixPartners. Clips: - Magnum Force. John Milius, Robert Daily, Warner Bros, The Malpaso Company. - RoboCop. Edward Neumeier, Michael Miner, Arne Schmidt, Orion Pictures.

Profit sharing is at the heart of the private equity incentive model: deliver LPs a certain return and keep 20 percent of the profits.

But private equity managers in the UK look set to pay a higher tax on any profit they take from such investments. The Labour government, which was voted into power in July, has said it aims to raise the tax on carried interest so it’s closer to the income tax rate of 45 percent. Doing so would raise £565 million pounds ($746 million; €671 million) in annual revenue, according to the government’s estimates.

In this episode, we sit down with Michael Graham, a partner at law firm DLA Piper who specialises in tax for private funds. Graham has been part of the consultation group providing the UK's tax authority with details on what a potential hike in carried interest tax could mean.

Graham discusses the lessons the UK can learn from other jurisdictions, why it's unlikely professionals in the UK private equity industry will leave en masse, why a flat tax rate is an attractive idea, and what 'capital at risk' may really mean.

In this fourth episode of season two of the Disruption Matters special miniseries, we delve into the complex interplay between digital transformation and human interaction in sales and marketing. While technology can add efficiencies, the importance of the human element in customer engagement remains an issue. The conversation covers the challenges and opportunities of tactical pricing, particularly in a volatile economic environment.

Guests include Jason McDannold, partner and managing director at AlixPartners; Richard Liu, a partner in the enterprise technology and services arm of FTV Capital; Ben Russell, senior vice-president of private equity at Partners Group; Brit Yonge, an operating partner at Corsair Capital; and Jeremy Schein, a partner and member of the buyouts investment committee at Corsair.

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners

At day two of the PERE Europe Forum, Real Estate Capital Europe deputy editor Lucy Scott speaks with LaSalle’s Michael Zerda about why he’s never seen a lending environment in real estate that’s as compelling as it is today.

Proskauer’s Josh Newville and Tim Mungovan talk through the key legal risks facing private equity in 2019.

Stan Miranda, founder of Partners Capital, talks to Toby Mitchenall about how private markets investors should think about uncertainty when investing into the global energy transition. 

Carlyle, EQT, Infrared and BPEA give their predictions for the sustainability-linked loan market in 2022.

Government actions are generating opportunities in a range of sectors. Celia Yan of BlackRock tells us where to look.

We speak with three prominent female secondaries professionals – Kate Ashton, Martha Heitmann and Johanna Lottmann – and chair of industry body Level 20 George Anson to discuss the barriers to promoting women in secondaries, and how to break them down.

We catch up with William Greene, managing partner at Stafford Capital Partners, to discuss why some LPs are parting ways with stakes in infra funds and how big this market could become.

Firms should focus beyond the Commission's 'hot topic' compliance issues and understand their own individual vulnerabilities. 

In the second part of our European private debt series sponsored by Arrow Global Group, PDI editor Andy Thomson asks CEO Zach Lewy about the strategies poised to thrive in a rapidly changing environment. 

This episode is sponsored by Arcus Infrastructure Partners and Meridiam

That the world is on the path to climate catastrophe, and that urgent action is needed to reverse it, is widely agreed upon. Yet, a sudden weakening of resolve at the political level has been evident in 2023, with some European governments delaying or diluting their previous climate policy commitments amid challenges like the cost-of-living crisis and geopolitical tensions. In the United States, ESG has even become part of the ideological battle between Republicans and Democrats.

In this episode of Spotlight, Neil Krawitz, partner and head of ESG and asset management at Arcus Infrastructure Partners, and Matthieu Muzumdar, partner and deputy chief executive officer at Meridiam, tell Infrastructure Investor’s Helen Lewer that despite this challenging backdrop, infrastructure capital remains steadfast in its commitment to investing sustainably. They share their thoughts on where the opportunities are for the sector to play its part in creating a greener and more socially equitable future.

Executive recruiters Mary Gay Townsend and Simon Nixon discuss the pros and cons of having your own investor relations team – and whether it's worth it.

No development has impacted the private equity market over the past year like the rise of semi-liquid and evergreen funds. Semi-liquid/evergreen funds are similar to mutual funds in that investors can buy in one day, sell another day and access a seeded portfolio from the moment capital is invested.

GPs seemed to launch some kind of semi-liquid fund on a weekly basis last year, with ICG, Pantheon, Coller Capital and Ardian being examples of firms that launched or said they would launch such vehicles last year.

In this episode, we sit down with Richard Hope, co-head of investments at global asset manager Hamilton Lane, to discuss semi-liquid funds and why they're one of the hottest topics in private markets.

High-tech greenhouse and vertical farming start-ups all believe they can sustainably contribute to feeding the world while making a profit. Their funding rounds suggest investors believe them, but should they? 

Private Equity International is proud to present our first-ever serialized podcast, sponsored by AlixPartners. The five-part miniseries is focused on how private equity operators are finding opportunities in disruption. Listen to the first episode on August 17 right here on the Spotlight podcast channel.

In this third episode of season two of the Disruption Matters special miniseries, the focus turns to communication and leadership resilience. Guests share insights on how the pandemic led to more frequent and effective communication within portfolio companies. The conversation covers the importance of clearly defined roles, strong operating partner networks and annual meetings for leadership development, as well as the role of ESG in shaping corporate culture and attracting talent.

Guests include Ted Bililies, a partner and managing director at AlixPartners; Warren Valdmanis, a partner at Two Sigma Impact; Alan Goldfarb, founder and managing partner of Orangewood Partners; and Steven Maxwell, senior vice-president of portfolio human capital at Audax Private Equity. This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners The Disruption Matters special podcast series is back for a third season, and this year, leading industry experts discuss how private markets can best use today’s technologies to create value.

In this fourth episode, we discuss tech's role in improving the speed, rigour and ease of roll-up strategies, where a private equity firm acquires a platform company in a fragmented industry and uses M&A to consolidate targets to create a market leader. It's a popular strategy for the simple reason: it's worked so well in recent years. We'll look at what today's cutting-edge tools, including AI, can do for roll-up strategies, and where human expertise and experience still can't be replaced.

Guests include David Poole, partner, executive chair of digital at Stanley Capital; Max Julian Kaye, principal at Battery Ventures; Saurabh Singh, partner at AlixPartners; Jason McDannold, partner and managing director at AlixPartners; and Hoyoung Pak, partner and managing director at AlixPartners.

Clips -"People," Barbara Streisand. Funny Girl. Capitol -"Human Touch," Bruce Springsteen. Human Touch. Columbia

The top 50 secondaries investors globally raised $473.8 billion in the five years to the end of 2023, according to this year’s SI 50. That’s a 9 percent increase on last year’s ranking, when $434.5 billion was recorded across a longer counting period of five-and-a-half years.

Ardian took the top spot, raising $49.6 billion across the period, followed closely by Blackstone Strategic Partners, which raked in $49.5 billion. Lexington Partners, which holds the record for the largest secondaries fund ever raised, accumulated $36.7 billion in commitments, coming in at number three.

Specialisation is driving much of this underlying growth – whether that be through asset class expansion, strategies focused down on LP-leds or GP-led deals, or picking a focus on a market segment with less secondary competition. Evergreen vehicles are also spurring on new avenues for secondaries capital raising.

In this episode of Second Thoughts, senior reporter Madeleine Farman and Americas correspondent Hannah Zhang discuss how far these factors have driven growth in the SI 50 and how much room there is to grow further.

See the full SI 50 ranking here

Institutional capital is worried about the long-term impacts of 'a global stage that we've never seen before.' Anthony Breault of Oregon State Treasury, Greg MacKinnon of Pension Real Estate Association and Brant Bryan of Cresa tell us what a 'lower-for-longer' interest rate environment means for private real estate.

This episode is sponsored by UBS Asset Management and Proskauer Rose

The global secondaries market has grown from roughly $47 billion in 2014 to more than $100 billion today. In Europe, fragmentation has led to some significant regional differences. However, it is also clear that many of the trends and dynamics found in the European market are the same as in North America – indeed, some of these developments occurred there first.

In the penultimate episode of the Decade of Secondaries Investing podcast miniseries, we sit down with Jochen Mende, an executive director responsible for secondaries transactions at UBS Asset Management, and Bruno Bertrand-Delfau, partner and co-head of secondaries transactions and liquidity solutions at Proskauer Rose.

The pair discuss how the European secondaries market has developed over the past decade, how it compares with the North American market and what’s in store for GP-led and LP-led transactions globally.

For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.

The private equity industry is increasingly recognising the value of encouraging PE professionals to pursue more niche investing and operational strategies at their institutions.

In this episode of Spotlight, three of Private Equity International's 40 under 40: Future Leaders of Private Equity 2024 listees – Lamar Cardinez, a principal at Blue Owl Capital; Ngoc Can, portfolio director, co-investments at Texas Municipal Retirement System; and Richard Pearce, a partner at ECI Partners – discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with leveraging their expertise to find new streams of revenue. They also share their career advice for the next generation of PE professionals.

This episode is sponsored by Blackstone

Private credit has seen significant growth over the past year, with some of the largest asset managers increasing their allocations to the sector. It comes as volatile market conditions and geopolitical tensions have plagued most industries, revealing private debt as a more secure source of capital. So, how are firms looking to take advantage of this uptick in activity? And what areas will they be focusing on going forward?

In this episode, we're joined by Blackstone’s Michael Zawadzki and Brad Marshall to explore some of the trends shaping private credit and analyse what the manager’s investment strategy looks like. The podcast comes after Blackstone integrated its corporate credit, asset-based finance, and insurance groups into a single new unit called Blackstone Credit & Insurance (BXCI) in September.

California Public Employees' Retirement System, the US's largest public pension, last year introduced to its board a radically different method of investing: the total portfolio approach.

TPA has already been adopted by multiple sovereign investors around the world, including Australia's Future Fund and the New Zealand Superannuation Fund.

In this episode, PEI Group Hong Kong bureau chief Alex Lynn sits down with Doug Bell, investment strategy director at NZ Super, to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of TPAs when constructing a private equity portfolio capable of delivering long-term results.

NZ Super has NZ$80.4 billion ($46 billion; €44 billion) in assets under management and is now led by two new co-CIOs. It began the process of rebuilding its buyouts portfolio from scratch this year.

For more, be sure to also check out PERE's February cover story "Private real estate’s collision course with geopolitics."

Geopolitical tensions topped the list of near-term downside risks for businesses in the latest global risk survey by economic forecasting firm Oxford Economics. It is also a risk of particular relevance for the private real estate industry, given how geopolitical conflict stands to have a detrimental effect on property returns on both a macro and micro level.

In this episode, PERE editor Evelyn Lee speaks with Abby Rosenbaum, associate director at Oxford Economics, about how geopolitical uncertainty overall contributes to a higher-for-longer interest rate environment, which is considered to be the most damaging risk scenario on real estate performance. At the same time, specific geopolitical conflicts – namely, the escalating war in the Middle East and the looming threat of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait – also have a direct negative impact on real estate returns, but that impact varies by market and sector in less-than-obvious ways.

In this fifth and final episode of season two of the Disruption Matters special miniseries, we explore the complex relationships in private equity, emphasising the crucial role of clear communication among all stakeholders from general partners to employees. We discuss the alignment of long-term goals in acquisitions and address limited partners' concerns about debt and liquidity in unstable markets. The overarching message is that success hinges not just on financial metrics or strategies, but on effective communication.

Guests include: Kyle Nelson, a partner and managing director at AlixPartners; David Tayeh, head of private equity in North America for Investcorp; Joncarlo Mark, founder of Upwelling Capital Group and a former senior portfolio manager at CalPERS; Jonathan Pressnell, a partner at BluePoint Capital Partners; and Richard de Silva, founder and managing partner of Lateral Investment Management.

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners

In Europe and around the world, rising interest rates and falling valuations are impacting many commercial property sectors still reeling from the aftereffects of the pandemic, as well as secular changes in the way occupiers use real estate. Shrewd investment managers can help identify which assets, on a case-by-case basis, can result in the greatest returns and which property sectors are likely to pose the lowest risk going forward.

In this episode, Marc Fuhrmann, principal and head of real estate of Arrow Global, returns to speak with Jonathan Brasse, editor-in-chief, real estate at PEI Group, about trends in the ever-changing private equity real estate markets. This episode is sponsored by Arrow Global

The Searchlight Capital partner and former FCC chairman believes there could be plenty of opportunity for the private sector in the $65bn funding.

Guests from PEI Group’s 2023 list of influential women in private markets discuss what it's like to hold senior leadership positions, and offer advice to the next generation of leaders. 

Ryan Lanpher at Permira says partnering with strong management teams is the best way to capture value during these unprecedented times.

Subscribe to the new Private Debt Investor Podcast wherever you like to listen, or click here: https://www.privatedebtinvestor.com/podcast

PEI Group publication Private Debt Investor recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, and now it's launching its own podcast! To kick it off, PDI is taking a six-part look back with its Decade of Private Debt podcast miniseries, speaking with some of the industry's leading figures about the challenges, triumphs and the evolving dynamics that have defined the world of private credit over the past 10 years.

In this fifth episode, European Leveraged Finance Association CEO Sabrina Fox reflects on the highs and lows of borrower/lender deal negotiations in the industry.

To get the entire six-part miniseries right now, and continue getting market-leading insight into the world of private credit afterwards, search and subscribe to the Private Debt Investor Podcast wherever you like to listen, or click here.

And be sure to also check out our Decade of Private Debt special report at privatedebtinvestor.com.

Private markets are becoming more accessible to non-institutional investors, as the rise in semi-liquid vehicles this year demonstrates. At the same time, the industry is facing certain potential headwinds or tailwinds, depending on which region you're based in, as law firm Dechert's 2025 Global Private Equity Outlook survey has found.

In this episode, partners Sabina Comis and Chris Field sit down with Private Equity International senior editor Adam Le to discuss the results of the law firm's latest survey, which examines these issues and more.

In this podcast, Comis and Field also discuss:

• The expected impact of the US election on PE portfolios
• Regulatory scrutiny
• Fee structuring, including on co-investments
• Secondaries transaction activity and deal volume

For more private markets insights, check out privateequityinternational.com

Two professionals featured in PEI Media’s Women of Influence in Private Markets list 2022, APG’s Keren Raz and General Atlantic’s Melis Kahya Akar, discuss the challenges they faced as women in the field.

Two valuation management firms share their strategies for assessing a property’s worth during a time of massive dislocation and uncertainty.

Carlo Pirzio-Biroli, managing partner of Glendower Capital, shares his top tips on how to set up your own fund.

Edwin Conway, senior managing director and global head of BlackRock Alternative Investors, talks to New Private Markets about the 'tremendous capital shortfall' when it comes to climate tech solutions investment and why investors will lean in more to infrastructure and private credit.

We catch up with investment bank Evercore's private capital advisory head, who discusses single-asset transactions, secondaries deals in the era of covid-19 and what's in store for the market this year. Find our analysis of Evercore's mid-year report here.

Private debt as an asset class has seen unprecedented growth over the past decade, but macro headwinds are creating challenges for direct lenders, and rising interest rates – while potentially beneficial to returns – are likely to further increase financial pressure on borrowers. So what can the experience of working through previous downturns tell us about how to handle the current cycle? Can we expect a spike in default rates? And, looking forward, where is the US private debt market headed in 2024 and beyond?

In this episode – sponsored by TPG Angelo Gordon’s middle-market direct lending business, Twin Brook Capital Partners – we explore some of the key factors that will affect lenders’ abilities to manage portfolios in the shifting sands of the current market environment, as well as what the key differentiators are likely to be for fund managers in the years to come.

Listen as Andy Thomson, senior editor of Private Debt Investor, speaks with Drew Guyette, co-chief credit officer and senior partner at TPG Twin Brook, and Kim Trick, co-chief credit officer, head of underwriting and partner in the business.

Energy Impact Partners' Andy Lubershane doesn't question natural gas's warming potential, but explains why and how it can be a viable transition fuel that investors should consider.

What does it take for new teams – first-time GPs and spin-out GPs – to succeed in today’s environment? That's a question we put to Warren Hibbert, founder and managing partner at Asante Capital, a placement agent and advisory firm.

Asante has raised capital for firms including GRO Capital, eevolve, Maguar Capital Partners and Artá Capital. The firm was the second-most active placement agent for private equity emerging manager capital-raising in Private Equity International's Placement Agent Ranking 2024, having helped sponsors raise $2.21 billion in capital over the relevant period.

In this episode, Hibbert discusses how to set a target for a first-time fund, why track record and team cohesion are critical, and why emerging managers in today's environment need to hold a one-and-done final close.

Australian superannuation fund Aware Super opened its first overseas office in London last year and has wasted little time deploying capital. The fund, which manages A$170 billion ($110 billion; €105 billion) on behalf of predominantly nurses and teachers in Australia, quickly set on a plan to invest £5 billion ($6.3 billion; €6 billion) in the UK. It is almost halfway through that plan and most recently invested $370 million to acquire a stake in renewable energy group Octopus Energy.

In this episode, senior editor Adam Le sits down with Damien Webb, deputy chief investment officer and head of international, to discuss what the superfund looks for when it backs emerging managers (spoiler alert: it's more than just track record).

Webb also discusses how the fund invests in both funds and directs, its outlook on UK investments and how it plans to deploy more capital into secondaries.

PEI’s global editorial team comes together to discuss how a perennial heavyweight reclaimed the top spot after sliding last year, and other results from the 2023 PEI 300 fundraising ranking. See the full PEI 300 ranking here at Private Equity International.

Warburg Pincus’s Lauren Zletz, Neuberger Berman’s Sandeep Mirani and Hamilton Lane’s Nina Kraus share their career stories and advice on breaking into the private equity industry.

Jeff Hammer, global co-head of secondaries at Manulife Investment Management, discusses issues from moral hazard in continuation funds to the ethics of stapled deals with senior editor Adam Le.

Carbon capture and sequestration has made it into many headlines, but few investor portfolios. Infrastructure Investor speaks with Partners Group’s Esther Peiner, Keith Martin of Norton Rose Fulbright and Columbia University professor Scott Barrett to discuss where the market will move.

A decade ago, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, anxiety around unknowns was still rippling through financial markets, including within secondaries. Similarly, there was a great deal of concern around the Volcker Rule that came into effect in 2014, which essentially prohibited banks from investing in private equity with their own funds.

In 2013, secondaries volume sat at around $28 billion. The following year, volume leapt to $42 billion. While regulation should not be overplayed, the Volcker Rule and Solvency II – a regulation affecting insurance companies and the percentage of risky assets they can hold on their balance sheets – played a big role in this increase.

In 2014, "There was suddenly... a lot more publicity being given to what people had been doing," Katherine Ashton, partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, explained. "With the increased publicity, with the increased knowledge of the market, that fed on itself and led to outdoing some of the predictions [for the growth of the market] because the more people realised that there were willing buyers and sellers, the more it allowed the market to develop."

Welcome to the Decade of Secondaries Investing miniseries, where we celebrate 10 years of Secondaries Investor with reflections on key trends that have shaped the market, as well as a glimpse into what likely lies ahead. In this first episode, we sit down with Ashton as well as Michael Granoff, chief executive and founder at Pomona Capital. Each give insight into how the Volcker Rule and other post-GFC legislative frameworks spurred secondaries sales.

For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.

In this fourth episode of our miniseries Private Markets and the End of Cheap Money, we look at how private equity firms are dealing with currency risk and how deals are being affected by interest rates rising at different paces in various global regions.

Subscribe to the new Private Debt Investor Podcast wherever you like to listen, or click here: https://www.privatedebtinvestor.com/podcast

PEI Group publication Private Debt Investor recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, and now it's launching its own podcast! To kick it off, PDI is taking a six-part look back with its Decade of Private Debt podcast miniseries, speaking with some of the industry's leading figures about the challenges, triumphs and the evolving dynamics that have defined the world of private credit over the past 10 years.

In the first episode, cross-published here on Spotlight, Ares CEO Mike Arougheti looks back at a decade of strategic growth in private credit, emphasising the importance of enduring relationships and the misunderstood, yet resilient nature of the market.

To get the rest of the six-part miniseries right now, and continue getting market-leading insight into the world of private credit afterwards, search and subscribe to the Private Debt Investor Podcast wherever you like to listen, or click here.

And be sure to also check out our Decade of Private Debt special report at privatedebtinvestor.com.

At day one of the PERE Europe Forum, PERE editor-in-chief Jonathan Brasse speaks with the Ivanhoé Cambridge CEO about the importance of ESG and what role the real estate asset class plays in driving the conversation forward.

Kara Helander and Anna Edwin discuss how they are building diversity, equity and inclusion within their firms, and how the racial justice movement and pandemic have generated momentum for sustained action.

In this second episode of our miniseries, Private Markets and the End of Cheap Money, we talk to limited partners about allocation shifts, impacts on fundraising and what investors are looking for out of their GPs as rates rise.

Some investors might shun commercial real estate debt because of the drastic changes that we have seen since the pandemic. Martin Lechner of Corecam and Wayne Lasky of Maxcap Group share their insights on the investing environment down under.

Specialised secondaries strategies are becoming an increasingly important part of the market. According to data complied by Secondaries Investor, 85 percent of the capital raised by secondaries funds in final closes last year was for private equity strategies; the remainder of this was for non-PE strategies, and the year before that more than one-third of capital raised was for non-PE strategies.

There is also increasing specialisation within private equity secondaries, as firms including Lexington Partners, Strategic Partners, AlpInvest Partners and LGT Capital Partners carve out teams to focus on single-asset continuation funds.

In episode seven of the Decade of Secondaries Investing miniseries, senior editor Adam Le sits down with Jeremy Coller, chief investment officer and managing partner at Coller Capital, and Yann Robard, managing partner at Dawson Partners, to discuss how far the asset class has come in terms of specialisation and cross-asset-class appeal.

• For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.
• Listen: "Everything you wanted to know about preferred equity"

The cybersecurity threat landscape is constantly shifting. In this third episode of our miniseries sponsored by AlixPartners, learn how PE operators are keeping up.

Some experienced investment professionals are seeing their funds take a hit from the pandemic and are considering moving to new pastures. This is one trend identified by Will Invine of Stem7 in a discussion of key issues in alternative assets recruitment.

Nicholas Brooks, head of economic and investment research at ICG, discusses the biggest things GPs should be concerned about in an era of inflation and potential interest rate rises.

In this special episode, sponsored by Jersey Finance, head of funds Elliot Refson and lead in the Americas Philip Pirecki discuss how the offshore jurisdiction is a stable and reliable gateway to Europe for US managers.

Hugh Thomson, managing partner at Crosspoint Capital, discusses the recently issued Executive Cybersecurity Order and its potential influence on B2B and B2C companies.

Across the globe, EVs are seeing an uptick in both usership and government support. They stand to deeply reshape power grids, so the infrastructure supporting them has become top of mind for forward-thinking infrastructure investors. In this episode, we sit down with Benjamin Bygott-Webb, a managing director at EQT, and Gregory Remec, head of North American infrastructure at Fitch Ratings, to explore the investment opportunities – both direct and indirect – and how those investments may impact the already precarious electric grid.

To learn more, check out these stories on infrastructureinvestor.com: 

• The key is in the ignition, but will EV charging in the US start up?
• The EV challenge
• The charge towards greener transport

Senior reporters and editors from PERE, Infrastructure Investor and Agri Investor dig into the changes most likely to impact their respective asset classes under the new president and Democrat-controlled Congress.

This episode is sponsored by Nuveen and Igneo Infrastructure Partners

With the American electorate recently handing the White House back to Donald Trump, it seems like an opportune time to unpack what it could all mean for the infrastructure asset class – in particular, the US commitment to renewables and the energy transition. Trump is, after all, the man who previously removed the world’s largest economy from the Paris Climate Accord and has since sounded less than supportive of President Biden’s initiatives to stimulate the economy and create jobs through a series of infra-led federal legislation.

So, is the Inflation Reduction Act in danger of being repealed? Does global capital have cause to be jittery? Or is the case for renewables infrastructure now simply too strong for even a sceptical Trump-led administration to deny.

Helping us to address these questions and concerns are John Ma, a partner and co-head of Igneo Infrastructure Partners’ North America team, and Don Dimitrievich, the senior managing director and portfolio manager for energy infrastructure credit at Nuveen.

Endowments and foundations are some of the most consistent investors in private equity, and they often have some the highest allocations to the asset class. But have the challenges private equity has faced over the last 12 months dented their appetite? What are some of these investors thinking when it comes to their private equity portfolios?

In this episode of Spotlight, senior editor Adam Le sits down with Jill Shaw, a managing director at global consultancy Cambridge Associates, to find out what advice she is giving her clients when it comes to private markets portfolio construction and which investment strategies are most attractive to them.

PEI's editorial team takes a look at the record $180bn raised for private equity in Q1 2021 and how average fund sizes for private debt funds topped $1bn for the first time during the quarter.

The private equity industry has been pushing for more gender equality among GPs, LPs and intermediaries over the past decade, and the trend is now taking hold in the secondaries market, where diversity issues have historically received less attention.

In recent years, women across secondaries have been advocating for empowerment movements and forming support groups, including the Women in Secondaries network launched by Coller Capital and Akin Gump in 2020, as well as the WINS initiative backed in 2021 by five industry professionals representing the buyside, advisory, lending and legal sectors.

For those who have made it to senior roles, the priority is to retain, promote and elevate other women. In this eighth episode of the Decade of Secondaries Investing miniseries, Americas correspondent Hannah Zhang sits down with two women pioneers to discuss how the secondaries industry can promote gender equality. They are Francesca Paveri, senior managing director at investment bank Evercore, and Tori Buffery, senior director of secondaries at Nicola Wealth and senior adviser at Morningside Capital.

For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.

In this episode of Second Thoughts, our bi-monthly take on the biggest trends and developments in secondaries, Secondaries Investor's Madeleine Farman, Adam Le and Hannah Zhang cut through the headline figures in 2023's advisory reports to break down geographic trends and key themes in the market.

Total deal volume sat somewhere in the region of $109 billion to $115 billion in 2023 with LP-led volume making up $56 billion to $66 billion.

Farman, Le and Zhang delve into topics including APAC secondaries market activity, structured liquidity offerings such as NAV loans, preferred equity and GP commit financing, and the popularity of multi-asset continuation funds as managers seek to find ways to generate DPI for LPs.

At the PERE Network Forum, PEI's Mina Tümay spoke with Ardian's head of real estate, who says she's seeing the most opportunity from mixed-use assets.

Even post-covid, demand for data centres, fibre and towers continues to grow. Palistar’s Omar Jaffrey and Eurazeo’s Laurent Chatelin discuss how current digital infra trends are aiding the transformation to a more connected and sustainable world, and how investors can benefit.

This episode is sponsored by Palistar Capital and Eurazeo.

Across the private equity industry, the impacts of the pandemic-spurred economic downturn are being felt in dealmaking, which has slowed or paused fundraising processes while LPs work to understand the status of their portfolios.

Regulators and fund managers are adapting to accommodate greater retail investor participation in private markets, say SEI's Ross Ellis and ANZU Research's Steve Unzicker. 

This episode is sponsored by Kirkland & Ellis, LGT Capital Partners and TPG NewQuest

The Asia-Pacific secondaries market is one of the most fascinating corners of the global secondaries landscape. This region typically never accounts for more than single-digit figures in terms of global deal volume share – yet some of the most innovative transactions have come out of the APAC market over the years.

In this episode of our Decade of Secondaries Investing miniseries, we sit down with Brooke Zhou, partner at LGT Capital Partners; Michelle Cheh, partner at Kirkland & Ellis; and Darren Massara, managing partner at TPG NewQuest, to discuss what types of deals have happened over the last 10 years in the Asia-Pacific region.

We explore Renminbi-to-US dollar restructurings and why these have taken a back seat in 2024; why valuations are a more complex issue when it comes to Asia-Pacific GPs than their global counterparts; the different drivers of dealflow in the various markets in APAC and what types of opportunities these are bringing about; and why the regulations affecting GP-led secondaries deals in the US and western Europe have had little impact on APAC secondaries transactions.

For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.

Journalists across the PEI stable share their insights on an issue that has become top of mind for private fund managers and investors.

Partners Group’s Adrien-Paul Lambillon and G2 Venture Partners’ Valerie Shen discuss why ESG is important to them and look at how the industry can make progress.

This episode is sponsored by Golub Capital

Private credit has enjoyed massive growth for more than a decade, but there are real questions about what happens when conditions are less favourable. How can lenders that launched during the good times continue to succeed when the market changes?

David Golub of Golub Capital knows from experience. Golub Capital was founded 30 years ago and has performed well in all kinds of market conditions. One of Golub Capital’s strengths involves a ’good boring’ approach, which aims to minimise the excitement of market swings and focus on delivering consistently for its stakeholders.

In this episode, David discusses Golub Capital's founding and its evolution through the financial crisis and the pandemic. We'll look at how cultivating close, long-term relationships with sponsors can improve every stage of the deal process, and why remaining focused on companies in resilient sectors where the firm has deep expertise has helped Golub Capital remain consistent, even in times of ‘bad interesting’.

This episode is sponsored by the Credit Investments Group (CIG)

Private credit has expanded exponentially in recent years, with most citing the contraction in syndicated markets as the cause of that growth. But now those markets are opening back up, and questions linger about how that will affect private credit.

So what do continued inflation and elevated interest rates mean for today's managers? What does private credit look like now, and how will it adapt to a new macroeconomic landscape? Will private credit shrink in the wake of access to public credit, or will the two co-exist to provide a full suite of financing options to their clients?

In this episode, we'll look back at the causes of private credit's recent boom, how much of that boom might continue, and what the future of lending is likely to be in the coming years. We’re joined by Kevin Lawi, private credit portfolio manager and head of origination at the Credit Investments Group in UBS Asset Management (formerly known as Credit Suisse Asset Management), along with his colleague on the public side, David Mechlin, a US portfolio manager and member of the CIG Corporate Credit Committee.

Two professionals in the asset class featured in this year’s Women of Influence list, MV Credit’s Nicole Downer and Ares Management’s Andrea Fernandez, discuss how to navigate career challenges in the industry and resist gender bias.

In this episode of Second Thoughts, our bi-monthly take on the biggest trends and developments in secondaries, Ardian's co-head of secondaries and primaries Vladimir Colas makes a bold prediction for the secondaries market: the first private equity fundraise to breach the $30 billion mark will be a secondaries vehicle.

LP portfolios being brought to market are only growing in size, and if they could, sellers would be offloading even larger portfolios. However, secondaries activity is still constrained by the amount of capital available to deploy into these transactions.

Colas sat down with senior reporter Madeleine Farman to discuss how large the secondaries market could become in the near future, as well as how many new entrants Ardian expects to break into the secondaries market in 2024 and beyond.

This episode is sponsored by Bain Capital

Asia’s credit markets are the largest in the world, yet they remain heavily bank dominated. While large blue-chip businesses are well serviced, there is a material undersupply of custom, fit-for-purpose capital for SMEs, mid-market businesses and financial sponsors. This is creating a significant opportunity for direct lenders.

Asia’s credit markets are also complex and nuanced, which places a premium on managers with the right networks, insights and experience.

In this episode of the Private Debt Investor Podcast, Bain Capital’s Andrew Schantz, discusses how to navigate Asian private credit and what the future holds for an asset class having a “golden moment” across the globe.

Single-asset continuation funds have surged in popularity in recent years. While the technology isn't new, it took persistence from secondaries market advisers to show both private equity managers and buyers that vehicles associated with the moniker 'zombie funds' could be used to keep hold of star-performing assets.

Last year, single-asset continuation fund vehicles took out the largest share of GP-led transactions, accounting for around 39 percent of the $48 billion of volume seen in this part of the market, according to a year-end report from Lazard.

There was "some reluctance" from secondaries buyers when conversations around single-asset continuation fund transactions began, Harold Hope, global head of secondaries at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, told Secondaries Investor. "We traditionally bought portfolios. Sometimes they were concentrated portfolios, but they were always portfolios."

Today, these vehicles allow Goldman Sachs "to mitigate some of the broader risk that we face when we buy a diversified portfolio," Hope said, adding that the team is "excited about the opportunities" globally.

In this third episode of the Decade of Secondaries Investing podcast miniseries to celebrate the 10 years since Secondaries Investor launched, we sit down with Hope and Holcombe Green, global head of Lazard’s private capital advisory business. They discuss how continuation fund technology was developed over time to facilitate single-asset continuation funds, and how large this pocket of the market could become as more capital is allocated to the area.

For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.

Hamilton Lane’s long-time CEO explains the role he thinks private markets can play in the post-coronavirus rebuild, and why we shouldn’t worry about the public markets rally.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently passed rules relating to the GP-led secondaries market have put these deals squarely on LPs’ radars.

“[These rules] raise the visibility of GP-led transactions to LPs and they signal how important and risky those transactions might be,” Igor Rozenblit – managing partner and founder of governance, risk and regulatory services provider Iron Road Partners and the former private equity expert in the Division of Enforcement of the SEC – told Secondaries Investor.

“I wouldn't be surprised for LPs who have already focused on these transactions to focus on them even more… While all the other risks the LPs have always worried about are present, now you've got an additional regulatory risk as an LP that you have to worry about, and LPs are typically very concerned with their exposure to headline risk."

In this fifth episode of the Decade of Secondaries Investing podcast miniseries, we sit down with Rozenblit and Isabel Dische, chair of Ropes & Gray’s alternative asset opportunities group, to discuss the secondaries aspects of the private fund advisers rules under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and Form PF rules.

The pair discuss the evolution of the SEC’s focus on this small sub-asset class within the sprawling private markets landscape, what the regulator is looking out for in these transactions, and how GPs, buyers and advisers can navigate best practice as well as reputational risk that could come with these deals.

• For full coverage of our Decade of Secondaries Investing series, including all podcast episodes and an interactive timeline, click here.
• Read: "SEC votes through rules on GP-led secondaries reporting timeline"
• Read: "Rubber stamp speeds up market standardisation"
• Read: "The VSS case and the path toward best practice"
• Read: "Iron Road Partners: Analyst note on American Infrastructure Funds SEC charge" 

In our final episode of Private Markets and the end of Cheap Money, we hear from IMCO, Oaktree Capital, BC Partners and more on what investment professionals there keep their eyes on in the era of higher borrowing costs.

Executives from Angelo Gordon, Nuveen Real Estate and Canada Life make the business case for their preferred alternative use for the property type.

This episode is sponsored by Arrow Global

Commercial real estate was heavily affected by rising interest rates throughout 2023. Many sectors of the asset class struggled against a challenging macroeconomic backdrop, with transaction activity dropping significantly and debt providers becoming more conservative in their lending. But over the course of 2024, base rates have begun to stabilize. So, how are investors adapting?

In this episode of Spotlight, Zachary Vaughan, chief investment officer and global head of real estate at Arrow Global, speaks to Jonathan Brasse, editor-in-chief, real estate at PEI Group, about the impact of stabilizing interest rates and the best strategies for investors navigating the current market landscape. He discusses the significance of localized expertise in Europe, the emergence of situational distress in smaller transactions, and the shift towards operational real estate investments. He also discusses evolving portfolios and the increasing appeal of sectors like hospitality and retail.

In this episode, Brian Thies and Christopher Wolfe of Fitch Ratings speak with PERE Americas editor Miriam Hall about the outlook for multifamily real estate in the US and how banks may be exposed.

Banks’ multifamily lending has grown 32 percent since the end of 2019, per a Fitch report last month, to hit $613 billion at the end of 2023. That is a complicating factor for some regional banks, especially those with significant exposure to rent-controlled assets or areas facing oversupply. “The performance is still looking good, but that growth is probably masking what's underneath,” Wolfe said on the show.

Theis said it is an asset that has “flown under the radar” to a certain extent. “It's a class within CRE that has seen significant growth over the last four years – and as such, most of that was underwritten at extremely low interest rates,” he added. “So now, as a lot of that is coming up for refinance, it's doing so at significantly higher rates.”

PERE’s April cover examines outlook for multifamily, which you can read here.

Specialisation in the private equity industry has become part and parcel of its growth, with almost half of the roughly $785 billion raised for private equity strategies last year focused on non-buyout strategies.

In this episode, senior editor Adam Le sits down with Richard Anthony, chief executive of investment bank Evercore’s private funds group, to hear his advice for GP clients wanting to launch so-called 'ancillary' strategies.

For more, check out privatequityinternational.com.

This episode is sponsored by Nuveen Infrastructure and NextEnergy Capital

Clean energy is key to turning the world’s net-zero ambitions into a reality, an argument few would contest. So the IEA’s 2023 World Energy Investment report, which showed that clean energy investing rose at a faster rate than investment in fossil fuels in the period between 2021 and 2023, offers plenty of cause for optimism that the world is on the right path to tackling the climate crisis.

But it’s not moving fast enough, according to the United Nations, which has warned that government commitments are falling well short of what’s required to deliver net zero by 2050. It says that billions in capital must be ploughed into the energy transition to end reliance on polluting fuels.

In this episode of Spotlight, Infrastructure Investor’s Helen Lewer speaks to Joost Bergsma, global head of clean energy at Nuveen Infrastructure, and Michael Bonte-Friedheim, founder and group CEO of NextEnergy Capital, to gauge whether institutional capital’s loyalty to the agenda has wavered amid a difficult fundraising backdrop. Their conclusion? With many LPs under-allocated to infrastructure and the fundamentals for clean energy investing still sound, they expect more capital to flow into the space in 2024 and beyond. But managers with track records will have an edge in the competition for capital.

The Disruption Matters special podcast miniseries is back for season two, where leading industry experts will dissect the seismic shifts rattling the core of due diligence in private equity. The first episode's discussion zeroes in on the fusion of technology and leadership in shaping risk assessment and deal-making. It asks: how can the right balance between tech and human acumen make or break an investment?

Guests includes Joanne Taylor, a partner and managing director with AlixPartners; John Stecher, the CTO of Blackstone; Crosby Cook, a partner with EQT; and Marc Fuhrmann, a principal for real estate at Arrow Global.

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners