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.

This episode is sponsored by Barings and Nuveen

Technological innovation is making everything more digital-dependent, and a looming climate catastrophe is ramping up demands for cleaner energy. But neither digitisation nor the energy transition can be accomplished without building new infrastructure or repurposing existing assets, which requires some serious capital investment. Yet, with public purses at near empty levels and regulation constraining bank lending over the last decade, there is a sizable financing gap. This presents an opportunity for private markets.

In this episode, Pieter Welman, head of global infrastructure at Barings, and Don Dimitrievich, a senior managing director at Nuveen and portfolio manager for the firm’s energy infrastructure credit business, tell Infrastructure Investor’s Helen Lewer that infra debt is a core part of the capital solution. They explain why the strategy’s resilience in difficult economic conditions is piquing the interests of more and more LPs that are eager to finance the world’s future infrastructure needs.

This episode is sponsored by Infravia Capital Partners and Vauban Infrastructure Partners

Few would deny that investment in the energy transition is an urgent priority across Europe. Without investment in renewable energy, along with a host of associated infrastructure, there is little hope of meeting net-zero targets. Moreover, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated, Europe’s energy security depends on the continent harnessing its own renewable resources.

Yet escalating costs, supply chain disruption and rising interest rates have complicated the investment picture. Fund managers must navigate a complex web of considerations to ensure they select assets that truly possess infrastructure characteristics.

In this episode, Christoph Bruguier, chief investment officer at Vauban Infrastructure Partners, and Aymar de Tracy, partner in the infrastructure investment team at Infravia Capital Partners, tell Infrastructure Investor’s Ben Payton that the outlook remains strong. Despite complications in the market, they agree that infrastructure funds can access enormous opportunities with a disciplined strategy around energy transition investing.

This episode is sponsored by 17Capital

NAV finance used to be a niche, little known corner of debt capital markets, but over the past 10 years it has evolved into a firmly established part of the private markets ecosystem.

As NAV finance has moved into the mainstream, private capital managers have taken up NAV facilities in ever greater numbers to address a wide range of financing requirements.

So, how are managers using NAV finance across their platforms, and how has the market navigated a cycle of rising inflation and interest rates? What do LPs think of NAV finance and what is the outlook for the industry in the next 12 to 24 months?

In this episode, we sit down with 17Capital partner Dane Graham to discuss what has driven the NAV finance industry’s rapid growth over the last 10 years, unpack how managers are using NAV facilities at the portfolio company and fund level, and look ahead to what comes next following a period of higher interest rates and tighter liquidity.

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.

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners

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

In this second episode, we explore how technology is changing the nature of due diligence. How much can AI improve investment decisions? Is it only a matter of data management, or can these new technologies help identify potential operational efficiencies, EBITDA growth and new markets? And is this reserved for tech-forward industries like SaaS or can they be applied to sectors like manufacturing and insurance? We answer these questions with what’s possible today, complete with the limitations and the need for expert supervision. Listeners should know that this episode ends with a plot twist that might keep GPs up at night.

Guests include Anders Thulin, partner and head of digital & technology practice at Triton Partners; Andrew Tarver, founding partner of Motive Partners; Hoyoung Pak, a partner and managing director with AlixPartners; Jason McDannold, partner and managing director with AlixPartners; Lewis Bantin, partner at ECI; Sofia Gertsberg, managing director of quantitative investment science at HarbourVest; and Jeremy Lehman, director at Alix Partners.

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 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:

The PEI 300 ranking of private equity's biggest fundraisers is becoming an even more exclusive club: this year, a manager needed to have raised at least $2.3 billion over the preceding five-year period, up from $2.08 billion in the previous ranking.

The 300 firms in this year's ranking raised a whopping $3.28 trillion between them – a 6 percent year-on-year increase. In the top 10 alone, these firms raised $741 billion, up more than $10 billion from the previous ranking.

In this episode of Spotlight, PEI senior editor Adam Le, Americas correspondent Hannah Zhang and Hong Kong bureau chief Alex Lynn delve into the figures of this year's PEI 300 to look at a few trends including: GP stakes firms' positions in the ranking; the movement of Asia-Pacific-headquartered firms in the list; and why GP-LP communication is more important than ever when it comes to fundraising.

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.