AGM Alts Weekly | 4.26.26: Building bridges in a cocktail of complexity
AGM Alts Weekly #152: Making private markets more public, every week.
“Alt Goes Mainstream is category of one.” Global Head of Marketing & Communications, $X00B AUM alternative asset manager.
“When it comes to the intersection of alternative investments and wealth management, Michael just gets it.” CIO, $18B AUM RIA.
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For too long, private equity funds have relied on manual processes — spreadsheets, scattered documents, disjointed data — to track complex investment and ownership structures. It’s slow, error-prone, and not scalable. And when regulators, investors, or auditors come knocking, it’s a fire drill every time.
At DealsPlus, we help private equity funds digitise investment and ownership structures, eliminating data silos. Our software helps power key workflows such as: quarterly reporting, audits, compliance, and exits.
Good afternoon from London.
Almost a year ago, Blackstone celebrated its 25th anniversary in London. Blackstone Co-Founder, CEO, and Chairman Steve Schwarzman punctuated the celebrations by stating that the firm was planning to invest “at least $500 billion” in Europe over the coming decade, as I discussed in the 6.15.25 AGM Alts Weekly.
$50B of capital deployed annually by Blackstone would be no small figure for the firm, which deployed $133.9B in 2024 and $138.2B in 2025 (note: not all of this capital will be deployed in private equity).
When the industry’s largest investment firm makes moves of such significant size and scale, it’s hard not to take notice.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Europe is an attractive market, particularly in the private equity buyout space. Europe has long been an area of focus for many of the industry’s largest investment firms, both for firms whose roots were formed in Europe and for many of the industry’s largest asset managers that built outposts in the region.
As the below chart from CVC highlights, Europe’s buyout market is the second largest globally. A $20T economy and 500M consumers represent a large market for many companies to serve. These statistics perhaps help to provide an explanation for why there are over 12,000 companies in Europe that generate annual turnover of $300M or greater.
Despite the region’s size, EV/EBITDA multiples in European PE buyouts have remained consistently lower than its US counterparts.
Entry multiples don’t offer the only explanation as to why European buyout returns have bested US and APAC returns over 10- and 20-year net horizon IRRs, according to the below chart, but they are certainly one reason why European buyout has outperformed.
There is no question that both GPs and LPs alike see the attractiveness in European buyouts. It’s why LPs have continually allocated to managers that have a large footprint, platform, and expertise in European local markets.
If the upper end of the European buyout market possesses a set of dynamics that make it attractive to investors, then the middle market and small market possibly make for an even more exciting game on the field. But investing in European private equity doesn’t come without its challenges.
Detractors of the European investment opportunity will be quick to point out the region’s fragmentation as a challenge to building companies into large platforms that can become pan-regional winners.
Europe’s geographic complexity crosscuts regulations, languages, politics, and cultures. This multi-faceted cocktail of complexity can make for a difficult investment landscape; differing cultures, language, and regulations can prove to be a challenge for companies that try to export a product, service, or experience to a different part of Europe.
But Europe’s cocktail of complexity can also be a competitive advantage for investment firms that have the ability to navigate these challenges. And that competitive advantage can drive relative outperformance, particularly in the middle and smaller segments of the market.
This week, Bridgepoint’s Partner and Chief Investment Officer Xavier Robert provided a masterclass on the European middle market in the most recent Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.
Building bridges to diffuse fragmentation
Bridgepoint’s origins, like many of its scaled European private equity peers, began at one of Europe’s large banks.
Just 42 years ago, Bridgepoint was housed in the private equity division of NatWest Bank.
As Bridgepoint CIO Xavier Robert shared on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast, it was NatWest’s ambition to expand its banking operations across the region in the 1990s that helped Bridgepoint “build a network that [we have today] across Europe.”
Xavier referenced the firm’s early entrance into a number of key markets in Europe, with Bridgepoint (then NatWest Equity Partners), opening offices in Paris in 1991, Madrid in 1992, and Frankfurt in 1995.
The formation of this local network proved to be critical in markets where relationships, trust, and cultural understanding matter. Xavier noted that “[we really] benefitted from the investment that went into building a European network early on.”
The local knowledge and networks matter even more in a market that’s both large and fragmented.
Xavier shared a number of interesting perspectives in our conversation, one of which is that almost 90% of transactions happen in the middle market. As the below chart from the Bridgepoint 2024 Capital Markets Day presentation illustrates, 88% of buyout transactions (in both Europe and the US) occur at enterprise values below €1.5B.
Europe’s middle market investment landscape is vast. Xavier noted that Europe’s mid-market at sub-€1B TEV has more deals than in the market across the pond.
Standing tall in the middle
A deeper dive into the European middle market uncovers quite an interesting investment opportunity.
Invest Europe analyzed performance of European mid-market buyouts in 2024. Digging into the data revealed some interesting takeaways.
Invest Europe found that pooled net IRR (since inception to December 2024) for European mid-sized buyouts was 17.1%. This figure came in higher than the European large/mega and small buyout segments (14.5% IRR and 13.6% IRR, respectively).
This figure also bested North American and Rest of World buyouts, which generated 13.4% IRR and 11.0% IRR, respectively.
European mid-market buyout also handily outperformed the MSCI Europe and S&P 500 mPME returns over that time period (9.9% IRR and 6.6% IRR, respectively).
It isn’t just IRR that many European mid-market buyout firms have delivered. They also generated DPI. This feature has been particularly true in Bridgepoint’s case.
Bridgepoint returned €16.6B to LPs in the last two years, as the below chart from the firm’s 2025 Results presentation (pg. 19) illustrates.
There are a number of reasons that have driven outperformance in the European mid-market buyout.
Xavier referenced a number of unique features about the European mid-market that provide investors with a number of levers to drive returns:
So the great thing about [the middle market is] that you can choose. You can pass if it’s something you don't like or it's too expensive. You have the luxury of choice if you get the right deal flow. So that's a big advantage. The second one is you are much more in control of your growth. If you buy a company that is not so big, you can internationalize it. You can take it elsewhere in Europe. You can take it to the US or Asia. That's completely under your control. You're completely independent of the macro. You can accelerate the growth because the company is not too big. The M&A will have a much bigger impact. And then at Bridgepoint, especially, we buy a lot of companies from founders and families. So they're usually great companies or good companies, but they're not perfectly run. So your capacity also to improve the governance and lots of aspects of the way the companies run is much higher. So you have much higher control. And I would say the last point is also because the companies are smaller. In terms of exit, it has proven true that the past couple of years, it's easier to sell because you don't need to IPO [companies].
A slide from Bridgepoint’s 2024 Capital Markets Day presentation brings to life Xavier’s aforementioned observations about how features of the middle market enable more avenues for value creation.
These qualitative descriptions of both middle-market and small-market buyouts appear to bear out in the data.
StepStone Group has unpacked the European mid-market and small-market investment landscape in a number of research papers over the past few years.
Drivers of investment returns in European buyouts come largely from profit growth. While leverage and multiple expansion played a role in helping to drive returns, profit growth accounted for 45% of value creation in StepStone’s analysis of 945 substantially realized European buyout investments since 2010.
Buying lower and selling higher certainly doesn’t hurt a firm’s ability to generate returns in the middle market. Historically, mid-market and small-market buyouts in Europe have tended to have much lower entry multiples than large-market buyouts.
A chart from Bridgepoint artfully illustrates this feature of the middle market. Bridgepoint has managed, in a number of cases, to drive performance by entering at the lower end of the long-term sector multiple range and managing to exit at either (or both) a higher multiple than entry and at the higher end of the sector multiple range.
It’s worth noting that entry prices may be going up, even in Europe. Xavier mentioned in our conversation that the days of buying companies cheaply are long gone. But just because entry prices may no longer be “cheap,” it doesn’t mean investment firms should overpay, in Xavier’s view.
Maybe 20 years ago you could buy a company cheaply. That doesn’t exist anymore. It may happen once in a while, but you don’t build an investment strategy based on buying cheap. You can’t, especially if you want to buy a company of quality. So [what] you can do is avoid buying at too high a price. That is very important because if you buy a company, then when you have to sell it at two or three turns of EBITDA re-rating, it’s awful. You can do a simple Excel spreadsheet. The entire work you’ve done has been made to compensate for your duration. So that’s what you want to avoid at all costs: overpaying. That’s why the luxury of choice, being able to find your own deals, having the relationship with the entrepreneurs, the families, that’s how you avoid that. But once you’ve done that, how do you create the value? It’s mostly through growing the company. It’s internationalizing [the business], that’s a big factor for us. It’s doing M&A. That’s another big factor. And then it’s all the improvement you can do in the way the company is run.
Purchase price is one element of driving returns. Lower leverage can be another.
Small-market buyouts in Europe have also tended to use meaningfully less leverage than larger buyout deals.
Less leverage requires less debt and interest needed to be paid down over time, meaning companies can have higher free cash flow to reinvest in their business or make acquisitions to expand into other regions or verticals.
Investment firms in Europe can also look beyond quantitative metrics in order to generate outperformance.
A chart from a 2025 research paper from StepStone illuminates just how nuanced it can be in order for firms to have success investing in the European market.
A StepStone study of all investments made over a 10-year period from 2012 through 2022 found that sector specialization and geography were important drivers of investment performance for the top 30 European small-market buyout managers.
StepStone found the features that resulted in the opportunity for outperformance in the small-market segment were country or regional specialists, with 85% of those managers focusing on Northern Europe.
Interestingly, StepStone’s data found that, in the small-market segment, none of the top 30 managers combined pan-European coverage with a sector-generalist model. No GP that combined diversification across 4+ regions and 4+ sectors made it into the top 30. This feature highlights the criticality of specialism, particularly in a market with fragmentation of cultures, regulatory environment, and languages.
Local presence is an important feature for European private equity firms. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of EQT’s maxims that drives their DNA is the concept of “locals with locals.”
Other European firms also understand the importance of investing in boots on the ground. Xavier referenced Bridgepoint’s focus of having a “very strong local presence.”
It takes a concerted effort of investing in building a local presence in order to win in Europe. This feature will only become more important as Europe marshals resources and mindshare to focus on European tech sovereignty.
Seizing the opportunity
This topic was a feature of the conversation at a recent fund AGM I attended in Europe. European governments and investors alike are well aware of the importance of creating a home for regional winners, particularly across industries of geopolitical consequence like tech and defense.
A recent EQT white paper on “Seizing Europe’s Strategic Tech Opportunity” highlighted sectors across two categories, “Right to win” sectors and “Can’t lose” sectors, that will be of strategic import to the region:
Europe has a right (and, quite frankly, a desire) to win across a number of sectors in tech and defense, as the below chart from EQT illustrates.
There’s also now a concerted effort by Europeans to build out a number of sectors in the region. Where there is a will, there is a way. And where there is a way, there will be capital flows.
Capital formation and investment flows are, in some respects, an expression of the type of world that both GPs and LPs wish to see. The size and scale of Europe’s investment opportunity, both due to features of the region and because of the necessary will to win, make Europe quite an interesting region for investment going forward, particularly in the middle-market buyout segment.
AGM Index
AGM has created an Index to track the leading publicly traded alternative asset managers.
Some of the industry’s largest alternative asset managers are publicly traded — and their net inflows can serve as a window into how private markets are being perceived by investors and allocators who are allocating capital into alternative investments.
Note: AUM figures are based on fee-paying AUM where applicable.
Who is hiring?
In order for alts to continue to go mainstream, we need the best talent to go into the space. Here are some openings at private markets firms. If you’d like to connect with any of these teams, let me know, and I’m happy to facilitate an introduction if appropriate. If you’re a company or fund in private markets, feel free to reach out to share a job description you’d like to be listed here to highlight for the Alt Goes Mainstream community.
🔍 Blackstone (Alternative asset manager) - Blackstone Private Wealth - Product Specialist, Vice President (Real Assets). Click here to learn more.
🔍 KKR (Alternative asset manager) - Head of Americas Wealth IR Servicing. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Apollo Global Management (Alternative asset manager) - Director, Transformation Management - Private Credit & Private Markets. Click here to learn more.
🔍 EQT Group (Alternative asset manager) - Head of Social Media. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Blue Owl (Alternative asset manager) - Global Client Marketing, Product Marketing & Content Strategy – Senior Associate. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Franklin Templeton (Asset manager) - Portfolio Manager, Private Markets. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Goldman Sachs Alternatives (Alternative asset manager) - Asset & Wealth Management, Client Solutions Group, Wealth Alternatives Specialist, New York - Vice President. Click here to learn more.
🔍 HarbourVest (Alternative asset manager) - Senior Associate, Business Intelligence - Global Private Wealth. Click here to learn more.
🔍 iCapital (Private markets infrastructure investment platform) - Chief Risk Officer, Managing Director. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Ultimus Fund Solutions (Fund administrator) - Managing Director, Fund Accounting. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Anthropic (AI foundational model company) - Strategic Account Executive, Asset & Wealth Management. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Krilogy (Wealth manager) - Senior Wealth Advisor. Click here to learn more.
🔍 MSCI (Data services) - Sales Executive, VP - Private Capital Solutions. Click here to learn more.
🤝 Interested in learning more about AGM RIA Field Trips? 🤝
Read about the expansion of Alt Goes Mainstream, with the launch of the AGM Community and AGM Events.
We’ve also built out the AGM Community RIA Advisory Board, an experienced, thoughtful, and intellectually curious group of private wealth management and private markets executives and operators, to help shape the direction of AGM Community.
The latest on Alt Goes Mainstream
Recent podcast or video episodes and blog posts on Alt Goes Mainstream:
🎥 Watch Bridgepoint’s Partner and Chief Investment Officer Xavier Robert provide a masterclass on the European middle market investing landscape. Watch here.
🎥 Watch AlphaCore’s CEO & Founder Dick Pfister share his perspective on building a wealth management firm with “alpha at its core” in a podcast recorded live at the iCapital Connect conference. Watch here.
🎥 Watch HarbourVest’s CEO John Toomey discuss how private markets have changed and how HarbourVest has been “earning investors’ trust” for over 40 years. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Stonepeak’s Partner and Senior Managing Director, Stonepeak Credit Ryan Roberge on the evolution of infrastructure credit. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Bloomberg’s Head of Fixed Income & Private Markets Brad Foster on the convergence between public and private markets and how the market structure evolution in private markets might unfold. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Q&A with MSCI Head of Private Assets Luke Flemmer for perspectives on how market structure is evolving to build increased transparency in private markets. Read here.
🎥 Watch Brookfield Asset Management’s President, Private Equity Group David Nowak discuss what “earn your seat” private equity means and how Brookfield’s owner-operator and industrial heritage have shaped the firm’s private equity investment business. Watch here.
🎥 Listen and watch EQT’s Deputy Managing Partner and Chairperson of EQT Real Assets Lennart Blecher share the history, background, and evolution of the firm’s infrastructure investment business and how EQT takes an active ownership approach to real assets. Listen here and Watch here.
🎥 Watch Stable Asset Management’s Founder & CEO Erik Serrano Berntsen discuss the evolution of the GP seeding market and what it takes to build a great alternative asset management firm. Watch here.
🎥 Watch MSCI’s Head of Private Assets Luke Flemmer discuss the evolution in private markets market structure and how standardization, normalization, and transparency of data will transform private markets. Watch here.
🎥 Watch AGM Unscripted at the Goldman Sachs Alternatives Summit with Partners Matt Gibson (here), James Reynolds (here), Kristin Olson (here), Harold Hope (here), Michael Bruun (here), and Jeff Fine (here).
🎥 Watch Lexington Partners’ Partner Taylor Robinson share details about the evolution of the secondaries market and why secondaries are in the spotlight. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Q&A with Blue Owl Senior MD and CEO of Global Private Wealth Sean Connor on how they are serving the wealth channel in 2026 and beyond. Read here.
🎥 Watch Ultimus Fund Solutions’ CEO Gary Tenkman discuss how Ultimus is helping to build core fund administration infrastructure that powering the evergreen evolution and is helping to make private markets go mainstream. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Goldman Sachs’ Partner and Global Head of Private Wealth Management Capital Markets and Global Head of Goldman Sachs Apex Family Office Coverage Sara Naison-Tarajano discuss how Goldman Sachs has built its Apex Family Office Coverage group to serve UHNW families and family offices. Watch here.
📝 Read about the expansion of Alt Goes Mainstream, with the announcement of AGM Community, the creation of the AGM Community RIA Advisory Board, and why we believe that the industry should have small, curated events and community-building efforts. Read here.
🎥 Watch Stonepeak’s MD and CEO of SP+ INFRA Cyrus Gentry discuss the why and the how of bringing infrastructure investing to the wealth channel. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Blue Owl’s Senior MD and President & CEO of Global Private Wealth Sean Connor discuss the firm’s focus on the wealth channel and how the firm is a growth company in a growth industry that is investing in megatrends. Watch here.
🎥 Watch the latest Alts Pulse with iCapital Chairman & CEO Lawrence Calcano where we go global and discuss Lawrence’s recent trip to Asia to peer into the nuances of the different wealth management markets around the globe. Watch here.
🎥 Listen and watch EQT’s Chairperson EQT Asia and Head of Private Capital Asia Jean Eric Salata share reflections on leadership, culture, and values from one of the world’s largest investment firms. Listen here and Watch here.
🎥 Listen and watch EQT’s Founder and Chairperson Conni Jonsson discuss how EQT has built a global private equity firm the Nordic way. Listen here and Watch here.
🎥 Watch Vista Equity Partners’ President and COO David Breach discuss how Vista has built a software investing powerhouse in the age of AI. Watch here.
🎥 Watch ING’s Anneka Treon, Global Head of Private Banking, Wealth Management & Investments, and Johan Kloeze, Head of Private Banking & Wealth Management NL, ING, share lessons learned from building a private markets platform for private wealth clients. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Oaktree Capital Management’s Co-CEO and Head of Performing Credit Armen Panossian share why investors shouldn’t “have to reach for risk to generate the right return.” Watch here.
🎥 Watch Franklin Templeton’s COO - Global Wealth Management Alternatives George Stephan discuss the evolution of Franklin Templeton’s Alternatives business and how the firm has brought public and private together. Watch here.
🎥 Watch iAlta Holdings’ Founding Partner Bill Crager discuss the evolution of wealthtech from building Envestnet as Co-Founder and CEO to why today is a “transformational moment” in wealth management. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Vista Equity Partners’ Founder, Chairman, and CEO Robert F. Smith discuss who will benefit from AI and how he built a $100B enterprise software scaled specialist firm. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Nomura Capital Management’s CEO Robert Stark discuss how they have built a private credit firm within a global bank. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Op-Ed with Blue Owl Senior MD and Head of Digital Infrastructure Matt A’Hearn on building the backbone of the digital economy. Read here.
🎥 Watch PGIM’s Global Head of Alternative Investments Dominick Carlino discuss the evolution of distributing alternative investments to the wealth channel. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Blue Owl’s Senior MD and Head of Digital Infrastructure Matt A’Hearn share why he believes there’s a generational opportunity in financing digital infrastructure. Watch here.
🎬 Watch AGM Originals The DNA - Season 1 with conversations with EQT’s Conni Jonsson, Jean Salata, Lennart Blecher, Geraldine O’Keeffe, Peter Beske Nielsen, Peter Aliprantis, Hari Gopalakrishnan, William Vettorato, and Ken Wong about the firm’s DNA and its different investing capabilities. Watch here.
🎥 Watch PGIM’s Head of Multi-Asset and Quantitative Solutions Phil Waldeck discuss the intersection of insurance and asset management. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Stonepeak Chairman, Co-Founder, CEO Mike Dorrell share his story as a pioneer in infrastructure investing. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Hg Partner and Head of Value Creation Chris Kindt discuss AI’s transformative role in value creation for private equity. Watch here.
🎥 In Permira Part 2, watch Permira Co-Chairmen & Co-CEOs Brian Ruder and Dipan Patel discuss how the collaborative leadership model in action has helped the firm scale to an €80B alternative asset manager. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Permira Co-Chairman & Co-CEO Dipan Patel discuss how to scale an €80B alternative asset manager. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Morningstar CEO Kunal Kapoor cover the most pressing topics in private markets today, including the convergence of public and private, liquidity vs illiquidity, investor education, the importance of transparency, and the why, what, and how behind evergreen funds. Watch here.
🎥 Watch The Compound and Friends (TCAF) Co-Hosts and Ritholtz Wealth Management Partners Downtown Josh Brown and Michael Batnick and I go back and forth about private markets on TCAF Episode 207. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Stonepeak Co-President Luke Taylor discuss what it takes to be a great infrastructure investor. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Arcesium MD and Head of Client and Partner Development David Nable discuss how to architect private markets technology infrastructure for the future. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Hg Senior Partner and Executive Chairman Nic Humphries discuss how Hg has grown into a $100B scaled specialist and how one of the industry’s leading private equity technology and services investors is “navigating investing at an inflection point in history.” Watch here.
🎥 Watch EQT Partner, Head of Private Wealth Americas Peter Aliprantis live from Miami on how EQT is bringing global local. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Op-Ed with Arcesium SVP, Business Development - Private Markets Jean Robert on why asset managers need to rethink reporting as a strategic advantage. Read here.
🎥 Watch Blue Owl Co-President and Global Head of Real Assets Marc Zahr share the story of how he built Oak Street from $17M in AUM in 2009 to what is now Blue Owl’s $67.1B AUM Real Assets business in a live Alt Goes Mainstream podcast at Future Proof Citywide. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Hg’s Partner and Head of Hg Wealth Martina Sanow discuss how Hg has unlocked opportunities for the wealth channel to invest in Europe’s largest portfolio of software and services businesses. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Goldman Sachs’ Partner and Global Co-Head of the Petershill Group at Goldman Sachs Robert Hamilton Kelly discuss the evolution of the GP stakes industry and how Goldman has become a market leading GP stakes investor. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Blue Owl’s MD, Head of Alternative Credit Ivan Zinn unpack private credit and why ABF has become a prominent part of the private credit ecosystem. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Op-Ed with Blue Owl Head of Alternative Credit Ivan Zinn on why “asset-based finance today mirrors the evolution of corporate direct lending from over a decade ago.” Read here.
🎥 Watch Krilogy’s Partner and CIO John McArthur discuss how an RIA can chart a growth path by building out its private markets capabilities. Watch here.
🎥 Watch New Mountain Capital’s Founder & Chief Executive Officer Steve Klinsky discuss how $55B AUM New Mountain has built a business that builds businesses. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Arcesium’s Private Markets Head Cesar Estrada discuss data silos and technology integrations in private markets. Watch here.
🎥 Watch GeoWealth President & COO Jack Hannah and iCapital SVP, Partnerships Michael Doniger discuss the ground-breaking BlackRock, iCapital, and GeoWealth unified managed account partnership live from iCapital Connect. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Goldman Sachs’ Managing Director, Global Head of Alternatives, Third Party Wealth Kyle Kniffen discuss how they are “standing on the shoulders of Goldman Sachs to be a complete partner” for the wealth channel. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Fortress Investment Group Managing Director & Co-Head of Private Wealth Solutions Adam Bobker discuss how Fortress has built a wealth solutions business from a whiteboard, leaning on the firm’s pioneering history of innovation. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Constellation Wealth Capital President & Managing Partner Karl Heckenberg on why there will be a $1T independent wealth management firm. Watch here.
🎥 Watch BlackRock Managing Director, Co-Head of US Wealth Business, Senior Sponsor for Retirement Business Jaime Magyera and iCapital Chairman & CEO Lawrence Calcano discuss the ground-breaking BlackRock, iCapital, and GeoWealth unified managed account partnership live from iCapital Connect. Watch here.
🎥 Watch KKR Partner & Co-CEO of KKR Private Equity Conglomerate LLC (K-PEC) Alisa Wood discuss how the firm has innovated in private markets, why KKR came up with the Conglomerate structure, and how evergreens can play a role in investors’ portfolios. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Cantilever Group’s Co-Founder and Managing Partner Todd Owens in a live podcast from BTG Pactual’s NYC office share why GP stakes can be the best of all worlds. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Op-Ed with Arcesium Private Markets Head Cesar Estrada on the rise of asset-based finance and why it’s the next growth engine for private credit. Read here.
🎥 Watch BlackRock’s Head of the Americas Client Business Joe DeVico, Head of Product for US Wealth & Head of Alts to Wealth Jon Diorio, and Partners Group's Co-Head of Private Wealth Rob Collins discuss their landmark private markets model portfolio partnership that could be the industry’s “iPhone Moment.” Watch here.
🎥 Watch Brookfield Oaktree Wealth Solutions CEO John Sweeney discuss how to build a high-performing wealth solutions team and why the word “solutions” matters when working with the wealth channel. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Cerity Partners’ Partner & Chief Client Officer Tom Cohn and Partner Amita Schultes talk about how and why they have combined a leading OCIO with a $100B AUM wealth management practice. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Marc Lipschultz, Co-CEO of Blue Owl, talk about how they have aimed to skate where the puck is going as Blue Owl has grown its AUM to $265B in nine years. Watch here.
📝 Read The AGM Q&A with Blue Owl Co-CEO Marc Lipschultz, where he highlights some of the trends that have propelled alternative asset management into the mainstream: scale, a focus on private credit, and a focus on private wealth. Read here.
🎙 Listen to Stephanie Drescher, Partner & Chief Client & Product Development Officer of Apollo, discuss what is safe and what is risky as she dives into both the convergence between public and private and the nuances of asset allocation. Listen here.
🎥 Watch Joan Solotar, Global Head of Private Wealth Solutions at Blackstone share why it’s not even early innings, but that it’s “spring training” for private markets adoption by the wealth channel. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Venkat Subramaniam, Co-Founder of DealsPlus on building a single source of truth for private markets. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Hamilton Lane Managing Director, Co-Head US Private Wealth Solutions Stephanie Davis and iCapital Co-Founder & Managing Partner Nick Veronis discuss the evolution of evergreen funds on the third episode of the Investing with an Evergreen Lens Series. Watch here.
🎥 Watch KKR Managing Director, Head of Americas, Global Wealth Solutions (GWS) Doug Krupa and iCapital Co-Founder & Managing Partner Nick Veronis discuss the evolution of evergreen funds on the second episode of the Investing with an Evergreen Lens Series. Watch here.
🎥 Watch Vista Equity Partners Managing Director, Global Head of Private Wealth Solutions Dan Parant and iCapital Co-Founder & Managing Partner Nick Veronis discuss the evolution of evergreen funds on the first episode of the Investing with an Evergreen Lens Series. Watch here.
📝 Read about a year in the book of alts — a compilation of the 1,000+ pages written in weekly newsletters on Alt Goes Mainstream in 2024. Read here.
📝 Read about the launch of the AGM Studio, a collaboration between Alt Goes Mainstream and Broadhaven Ventures to incubate, invest in, and help scale companies and funds in private markets. Read here.
🎥 Watch Stepstone Private Wealth CEO Bob Long discuss StepStone Private Wealth’s edge and nuances with their evergreen structures in the first episode of “What’s Your Edge.” Watch here.
🎥 Watch Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Cantilever Group and former Goldman Sachs and Broadhaven Capital Partners Partner Todd Owens discuss the middle market opportunity in GP stakes investing. Watch here.
🎙 Hear me discuss why and how alts are going mainstream on The Compound’s Animal Spirits podcast with Ritholtz Wealth’s Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson. Listen here.
📝 Read about the evolution of GP stakes, why alternative asset management business models are better than SaaS, and our partnership with Todd Owens and David Ballard at Cantilever, a mid-market GP stakes firm anchored by BTG Pactual. Read here.
🎙 Hear how Chris Long, Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Palmer Square Capital Management has built a $29B credit investment firm and a winning NWSL soccer franchise, the KC Current. Listen here.
🎙 Hear stories from building market-defining companies Blackstone, Airbnb, and private markets from Laurence Tosi, former CFO of Blackstone and Airbnb and Managing Partner & Founder of $7.6B investment firm WestCap. Listen here.
🎙 Hear Chris Ailman, the CIO of $307B CalSTRS, discuss how he manages a portfolio with ~40% exposure to private markets. Listen here.
🎙 Hear Blackstone CTO John Stecher discuss how technology is transforming private markets. Listen here.
🎙 Hear investing legends John Burbank and Ken Wallace of Nimble Partners provide a masterclass on investing with both a macro and VC lens. Listen here.
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Special thanks to Cameron Molnar, Ryan McCormack, Nick Owens, Michael Rutter for their contributions to the AGM Index section of the newsletter.
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The wealth channel access conversation almost always focuses on the product side, fund structures, minimums, and regulatory compliance. What rarely gets discussed is the credit side: SBLOCs and pledge lines are the mechanisms most UHNW clients use to deploy into these alts without liquidating existing positions. The advisors winning in this space aren't just sourcing deals, they're managing the full liquidity stack. That's the bridge worth building.