The PERE Podcast

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Show notes

The oil-rich economies of the Middle East’s Gulf Cooperation Council have long been essential capital sources for private real estate managers, with the region well-represented among the largest institutional investors in the asset class globally. But for a growing number of firms, Middle-East real estate is now emerging as a destination for capital deployment too.

On the latest episode of The PERE Podcast, we discuss how economic diversification, growth forecasts, regulatory reforms and relative isolation from tariff volatility have prompted several international asset managers to launch or commit to strategies targeting the region over the past year, including Gaw Capital, Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management, SC Capital Partners and Rava Partners, among others.

But investment in the region comes with its own unique risks, as exemplified this week by news that Saudi Arabia is scaling back previously outlined plans for several ambitious development projects, including the futuristic city known as 'The Line.' Do depressed oil prices, tightening liquidity conditions and continued geopolitical concerns represent a threat to these institutional plays targeting the region? Or are more firms likely to join the rush undeterred? Host Greg Dool sits with PERE’s EMEA editor Charlotte D’Souza and PEI Group’s real estate editor-in-chief Jonathan Brasse to break it all down.

Later in the episode, Brasse sits down with Ghada Sousou, managing partner of executive search firm Sousou Partners, which last year formed a dedicated capital advisory business focused on connecting private fund managers with Saudi Arabian institutional capital.

Further reading:

Net-lease strategies have long occupied a distinct niche of the broader commercial real estate market as a stable, low-risk, long-term inflation hedge. But after a string of billion-dollar deals involving some of the world’s largest private real estate firms, the net-lease sector is anything but boring.

On this episode of The PERE Podcast, host Greg Dool sits with PEI’s real estate editor-in-chief Jonathan Brasse and PERE Deals reporter McKenna Leavens to discuss the latest high-profile capital formation event: a $1.5 billion logistics joint venture between Singaporean wealth fund GIC and Realty Income, the largest listed US net-lease REIT.

Listen as the team discusses several unique aspects of the deal, including its role in the ongoing convergence of public and private real estate portfolios, as well as the precedent set by GIC’s previous push into the US net-lease sector with a $15 billion privatization of STORE Capital three years ago. We also shine a spotlight on net-lease strategies generally: what they are, how they work and why they are an area of growing conviction for private real estate investors.

Later in the episode, we are joined by Scott Merkle, managing director at sale-leaseback and M&A advisory firm SLB Capital Advisors, who shares his own informed perspective on the net-lease sector and what market participants can expect there in the year ahead.

If you're a regular listener, tell us what you think. We are currently inviting feedback via this survey as we seek to improve our podcast output. We would love to hear your feedback on what you enjoy about these weekly episodes and to better understand what we can improve. 

On this week’s episode, the team turns to the ultimate barometer for institutional appetites toward private real estate: fundraising volumes. The release of PERE’s full-year 2025 fundraising report earlier this week brought news of a long-awaited rebound in capital formation in the asset class after some challenging years. But what is really behind the recovery, and what does it suggest about where things are headed in 2026? 

Listen in as host McKenna Leavens is joined by PERE editor Evelyn Lee and PERE Americas editor Greg Dool to break down the overarching takeaways – including that fundraising volumes climbed nearly 30 percent year on year to mark the first annual increase since 2021 – as well as some of the more complex stories beneath the year's big stories.  

The episode explores the outsized role played by mega-managers, the resurgence of opportunistic strategies, divergent regional outlooks, the data center effect and why fundraising timelines continue to stretch to new record highs. 

Later in the show, listeners will hear from Ryan Cotton, head of real estate at Boston-based Bain Capital, who has a fresh perspective on the topic after recently closing his firm’s third flagship real estate fund on $3.4 billion in commitments. 

If you're a regular listener, tell us what you think. We are currently inviting feedback via this survey as we seek to improve our podcast output. We would love to hear your feedback on what you enjoy about these weekly episodes and to better understand what we can improve. 

For the year’s first episode of The PERE Podcast, the team lays out some of the major themes likely to impact the private equity real estate market over the next 12 months.  

Join co-host Lucy Scott, PERE editor Evelyn Lee and PEI real estate editor-in-chief Jonathan Brasse as they look at how geopolitical turbulence continues to unsettle the real estate industry as its re-opens after the holiday break. The team also digs into how financial disruption caused by the bursting of an AI bubble could overshadow optimism.

In addition, hear from David Steinbach, global chief investment officer at Hines, as he chats with co-host Greg Dool about his expectations for the year ahead, including his forecasts for dealmaking and capital deployment.

If you're a regular listener, tell us what you think. We are currently inviting feedback via this survey as we seek to improve our podcast output. We would love to hear your feedback on what you enjoy about these weekly episodes and to better understand what we can improve. 

For the year’s final episode of The PERE Podcast – and the second installment of our two-part year-end series – the team is closing out 2025 with a look back at the investors, managers and themes that reshaped the private equity real estate market over the last 12 months.  

Co-host McKenna Leavens is joined by PERE editor Evelyn Lee and PERE Deals editor Guelda Voien to unpack the biggest stories of 2025, from major M&A activity and headline-grabbing deals to the unique ways market participants found opportunities in a volatile and capital-constrained world. 

The conversation explores the surprises that emerged as some sectors gained momentum and drove investors back into action, and the stories that resonated most with readers throughout 2025. The team also reflects on a milestone for PERE Deals, marking its first full year as a standalone publication, and its coverage of a noticeable pickup in capital deployment in the year’s second half. 

Looking ahead, the editors share their perspectives on whether fundraising conditions are set to improve, the outlook for continued M&A activity and where investors are likely to place their bets as the calendar flips to 2026. 

In case you missed it: Catch up on last week’s episode recapping the biggest themes in real estate debt here.

As the year draws to a close, we will spend the next two weeks breaking down the top private real estate headlines from 2025, as well as the trends that defined market activity. Next week, equity is in the spotlight. This week, the team is zeroing-in on debt, the engine room of the industry.

Lucy Scott sits down with PEI real estate debt gurus Daniel Cunningham, editor of Real Estate Capital Europe, and Samantha Rowan, editor of PERE Credit, to discuss the best-read content of the year, the standout themes and their takes on what these stories tell us about the forces shaping the European and US credit markets.

The team also give their insights on how these themes will play out in 2026. Will competition, a defining feature of the debt markets today, intensify? And if so, where will lenders go to deploy capital and find fresh ways to stay competitive? The team also breaks down the topic of back leverage lending – one of the biggest stories this year – and looks at how this theme might evolve as more lenders seek to use the tool in Europe.

Lending activity is ramping up in European real estate markets amid rising appetite from banks and alternative lenders alike – even as a limited number of investment deals to finance creates intense competition for opportunities.

That is just one of the takeaways from affiliate title Real Estate Capital Europe’s annual Active Lenders report, an exclusive compendium of 64 of the continent’s busiest real estate debt providers through the year’s first three quarters. On this episode, host Greg Dool chats with Real Estate Capital Europe editor Daniel Cunningham and senior reporter Silvia Saccardi for a dive into the key findings, including the fact that this year’s list indicates a resurgence among traditional banks in addition to their alternative counterparts.

Later in the episode, we hear directly from one of those Active Lenders, Leumi UK’s head of property finance Peter Clayton, for his perspective on the list and what it suggests about where the market is headed in 2026.

Transaction activity has at last been picking up in the private real estate market after a multi-year slowdown. But one area that has stayed consistently busy has been the dealmaking environment for property fund managers themselves.

A string of deals dating back to last year has seen fundraisers band together to boost their assets under management, diversify their client offerings and seek to capture a greater share of capital from an increasingly disparate set of global investors and capital sources. One trend that has emerged of late has involved several manager stake sales that fit a similar paradigm: Large Japanese corporations, often with ties to the hefty investment arms of major insurance businesses, acquiring US- or Europe-based asset managers with sizeable real estate exposure.

From last week’s PERE exclusive on insurer Tokio Marine buying a majority stake in US real estate debt fund manager ACORE Capital, to Mitsui Sumitomo announcing the purchase of an 18 percent stake in Barings, to Mitsubishi Estate buying a majority stake in London-based Patron Capital – a deal which officially closed in the last week – and multiple other deals this year, one thing is clear: Japanese buyers represent a cohort of investors with serious appetite for private asset managers with inroads in the Americas and Europe.

Is it a trend? What is driving the activity? And what does it portend for the managers being acquired, the consolidators doing the acquiring, and those positioning themselves as the next targets? The latest episode of The PERE Podcast highlights several of these deals, with host Greg Dool in conversation with PERE editor Evelyn Lee and senior reporter Harrison Connery.

Later in the episode, we also hear from Patron founder Keith Breslauer for an update on his firm’s transition to Mitsubishi ownership and whether the market can expect to see additional similar deals moving forward.

This episode is sponsored by Manulife Investment Management

As new industries evolve and accelerate, new opportunities are constantly arising for institutional investors in the private real assets space.

It isn’t always easy, however, for managers to grasp hold of these opportunities. As assets like data centers have become investable in recent years, managers have found that they need to devote time and effort to understand the dynamics around these unfamiliar assets. And the private markets industry has occasionally been guilty of obsessing over which labels to apply to emerging assets.

This is the first episode of our Private Markets 2030 podcast miniseries, part of PEI Group’s wider initiative exploring how private markets are evolving as we enter the decade’s second half. Across the series, we unpack how managers can adapt, attract capital and deliver performance in an increasingly complex market.

Joining us are three guests from Manulife Investment Management: Erin Patterson, global co-head of research and strategy; Maggie Coleman, the firm’s chief investment officer for real estate equity and co-head of global portfolio management; and John Anderson, global head of corporate finance and infrastructure. They discuss how multi-product managers have an advantage in expanding into new opportunity sets and argue that a multi-product approach offers obvious benefits around diversification, while allowing managers the flexibility to pivot into new opportunity sets.