AGM Alts Weekly | 4.28.24
AGM Alts Weekly | 4.28.24
AGM Alts Weekly #49: Making private markets more public, every week.
👋 Hi, I’m Michael.
Welcome to AGM, the meeting place for private markets.
I’m excited to share my weekly newsletter, the AGM Alts Weekly. Every Sunday, I cover news, trends, and insights on the continuing evolution and innovation in private markets. I share relevant news articles, commentary, an Index of publicly traded alternative asset managers, job openings at private markets firms, and recent podcasts and thought pieces from Alt Goes Mainstream.
Join us to understand what’s going on in private markets so you and your firm can stay up to date on the latest trends and navigate this rapidly changing landscape.
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Good afternoon from London.
“With the 199th pick of the 2000 NFL Draft, the New England Patriots select Tom Brady, Quarterback, University of Michigan.”
The pick was called late in the afternoon on the final day of the NFL Draft. It was at a juncture in the NFL’s annual bonanza for college football players joining the professional ranks when only the diehard fans still watch the show. It’s the time of the draft when teams select a player where fans go “Who?” and then quickly proceed to search the internet to find out more details on the player’s measurables and college statistics (or, in the year 2000, flip through their Pro Football Weekly hard copy draft guide, as I did).
It’s the time in the draft when teams take flyers on long-shots to make their roster.
And long-shot is precisely how most draft experts rated Tom Brady.
NFL analyst Pro Football Weekly’s Joel Buchsbaum was far from the only evaluator to grade Tom Brady as a player with a “slightly better than 50-50 chance to make a roster.”
Each of the NFL’s 31 teams (at the time) deemed 198 players — including six quarterbacks — to be better than a player who has arguably become the greatest player in NFL history.
It’s highly unlikely that even those within the New England Patriots organization would have predicted at the time that they had just made one of the best investment decisions of the century in sports on a draft pick that many considered an afterthought.
As the 2024 NFL Draft takes place this weekend, it’s yet another chance for teams to make sound investments in their future.
Teams invest meaningful amounts of time, resources, and money into drafting the next great player, so it’s interesting to think about the parallels between drafting and investing. There’s certainly a thread that runs through them both: picking.
The diligence paradox
My favorite day of the NFL Draft is not Day 1 when the first round picks are chosen. It’s not Day 2 when the draft picks consist of players who aren’t the top choices but are still expected to live up to their draft status and be high-performers. It’s Day 3, rounds 4-7, when teams have the chance, but low likelihood, of unearthing a diamond in the rough.
Day 3 draft picks (and undrafted free agents) represent the diligence paradox. If Tom Brady was going to be one of the best players in the history of the NFL, how could he last until pick #199?
When teams pick the wrong player or pass on the right player, what do they miss in their diligence? Teams are generally quite data-driven, so they often look at the various physical measurables and athletic testing scores to determine if a player has the athletic capabilities to excel in the NFL. They perform a battery of mental tests, from aptitude scores to classroom tests on plays and formations. They conduct qualitative tests, grilling players and former teammates, coaches, and family about their character and work ethic.
Every year, teams invest tens of millions of dollars, if not much more, on resourcing and staffing large scouting departments, hiring data analytics teams, and consulting with independent scouting agencies. After all, the juice is worth the squeeze. The difference between picking the right players and the wrong ones can result in the difference in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and billions of dollars in franchise enterprise value if championships are brought home as a result of the right roster construction.
But what’s on paper doesn’t always pencil out to success.
Take it from Ryan Kalil, a former second round pick by the Carolina Panthers who went on to have a stellar career as a two-time First Team All-Pro and five-time Pro Bowler before embarking on a successful career as a Hollywood producer as the founder of Mortal Media with Blake Griffin (producing Apple TV+’s Hello Tomorrow! and White Men Can’t Jump):
Size, speed, and strength are certainly critical attributes, but they aren’t the be-all and end-all on the football field. Over my career, I've watched many players who were faster, stronger, and more naturally gifted than others—including myself—come and go. The key to success in football extends beyond mere game statistics and athletic metrics; it's about recognizing the right character.
Of course, character isn't easily quantifiable, and the selection process is further complicated by numerous voices—the owner, scouts, coaches, GM, analysts (“experts”), and fans. Every decision-maker claims to be unaffected by external opinions, but we're all human, and these perspectives inevitably have some influence. Which means having the right decision-makers becomes just as crucial as choosing the players themselves!
When faced with the choice of drafting among several similar athletes, it's tempting to select the one with the fastest 40-yard dash time. But football seasons and team dynamics are inherently volatile, the most insightful evaluators I've known have always looked beyond physical stats. They prioritize players who demonstrate a deep understanding of the game, a relentless work ethic, and the resilience to endure through ups and downs.
Picking right — in the NFL Draft or investing
Picking right — whether in drafting players for a team or investing into a company or fund — is one of, if not the most important, determinants of investing success.
In the find, pick, win, help framework of investing, the picking is often what drives outcomes the most. But it’s also the most difficult.
During the same week that NFL talent evaluators came together to make investment decisions for the future of their franchise, investment managers came together to attend the annual investment conference organized by Norges Bank Investment Management, the $1.6T AUM sovereign wealth fund that is the world’s largest single owner of equities in the stock market. The topic of this year’s conference? “How to become a better investor.”
And the sessions at the NBIM conference included topics such as building successful investment organizations through the core tenet of psychological safety and why psychological and behavioral traits characterize the best investors.
The takeaway? Picking the best players in the NFL Draft and picking the best founders and companies for investment both hinge on psychology.
What can the investment world learn from the NFL Draft? And vice versa. What can the sports world learn from investing?
Parallels between building a high-performing sports team and a high-performing investment organization start with the same thing: people.
The ability to effectively evaluate an investment may be aided by data analysis, but data analysis alone does not guarantee a successful investment. Why a player or a founder succeeds is down to something that often we can’t see or quantify. As Shannon Sharpe said in reference to his undrafted teammate Rod Smith, who went on to have a stellar NFL career, “the thing you can’t measure is someone’s heart, someone’s desire.”
As Ryan says above, “size, speed, and strength are certainly critical attributes” in sports, but it’s the “right character” that is often a key factor in someone’s success. The hard part? Creating consistency in evaluating a player’s or a founder’s qualitative traits
The challenge of consistency in qualitative evaluation of draft talent is evident in FiveThirtyEight’s 2014 deep dive into whether or not NFL talent evaluators can “beat the draft” on a regular basis. On one hand, as FiveThirtyEight’s article highlights, it’s the ability of each team to have access to the same data (game tape, workouts, biometric data) and the “paradox of skill” that Morgan Stanley’s Michael Mauboussin finds where the smaller the variation in skill between competitors, the more opportunity for randomness to be a differentiating factor that both make for divergence in outcomes in team draft performance. On the other hand, it’s teams’ inability to properly evaluate the qualitative aspects of a player — their character, grit, drive, determination, motivation, ability to handle pressure — that is, at times, the reason why they pick wrong.
The same challenge appears in investing. Numbers and data analysis can only take an investor so far. Yes, they can certainly help tilt the odds investors’ favor, but, as one upcoming Alt Goes Mainstream podcast guest shares based on their experience as one of the industry’s top investors, conviction and gut play a key role in success. Process matters. But so does relying on instincts, particularly when it comes to the qualitative evaluation of a founder and a team.
Trusting the process
There’s yet another layer of psychology that matters when it comes to investing: the internal dynamic of the investment team that is making decisions on companies and founders. NBIM is spot on to hold space for a topic on psychological safety within an investment firm at their conference.
As another upcoming Alt Goes Mainstream podcast guest who has been both a GP and an LP shares in their episode, ambition and alignment within the team are critical to an investment firm’s short- and long-term success.
There must be psychological safety for an investor to feel comfortable in their conviction with an investment decision, even if it may seem risky or contentious at the time of the investment.
Empowering investment team members to voice opinions in a safe space can help unearth less obvious decisions. That’s something that new Washington Commanders GM Adam Peters learned from his experience as the Assistant GM with the San Francisco 49ers. As a recent article in The Athletic by Ben Standig and Matt Barrows highlights, Peters gave everyone in the scouting department the space to share their conviction for a specific player.
Peters did something cool every year in San Francisco. Before Day 3 of the draft, he had everyone in his department — from area scouts to the college scouting director — stand up and name a player he or she hoped the 49ers would select that day. They called it “Table Talk.”
In 2021, the runaway winner was Hufanga, whose slow 40-yard dash that year caused him to tumble down draft boards. Still, the local scout loved him. So did some of the national scouts and coaches.
“When he was still on the board (late in the fifth round), that made it an easy pick,” Peters said. “And we think we got a really good player at a really good value there.”
Peters’ process surfaces something that practice professor in the Operations, Information & Decisions group at UPenn’s Wharton School Cade Massey notes is critical to decision-making success.
In a 2018 article he wrote on identifying talent, Massey provides useful insights for making good hires:
Yet, if there is one consistent yet underappreciated principle for making good hires, it is that process beats technology. It turns out that best practices in hiring have much in common with what psychologists have preached for decades.
Process is something that extends beyond the moment of picking — in both a draft decision and an investment. Certainly, in order to generate the best possible outcome in the find, pick, win, help framework of investing, good picking will make it easier to help that pick succeed. The best founders and companies are more likely to have success than others, so investors tilt the odds in their favor with the right pick. But helping is also critical to investing success.
Former undrafted free agent wide receiver Damiere Byrd, who beat long odds to carve out a successful career with the Carolina Panthers, Arizona Cardinals, New England Patriots, and Atlanta Falcons and reach his eighth year in the NFL, highlights just how important it is for teams to invest in the talent that develops the talent if they want a return on their investment:
I think talent evaluators don’t always get picks right because they miss the biggest variable: talent development within their own organization. Stats and previous film stamp the tangible skills, while previous coaches and outside influences stamp the intangibles surrounding an athlete. Owners, GMs, and Head Coaches call the shots during draft day, but it is the Position Coaches who carry the main task of day-to-day instruction and training. If these coaches can’t develop the athlete to produce at the expected rate of return, it can cost the organization wins and, ultimately, career longevity for all parties.
The same is true in investing. Investment firms are only as good as the talent they hire and develop.
Investing in success
The intersection of sports and investing brings to the surface an interesting question.
We are in the early innings of private equity firms owning sports teams. We’ve seen private equity and alternative asset management firms like Arctos, Avenue Capital, Sixth Street, Carlyle, RedBird Capital, Ares, CVC Capital Partners, and individuals like Apollo Co-Founder Josh Harris, Carlyle Co-Founder David Rubinstein, Blackstone’s Head of Tactical Opportunities amongst the private equity investors that have invested into and own sports teams.
Does the process that investment firms have perfected over years to build some of the biggest investment powerhouses in the world cross over to the sports world when it comes to roster building and drafting?
Only time will tell, but given the overlaps between investing into companies and founders and investing into sports executives and talented players, it would not be surprising to see these worlds continue to merge.
Thanks Ryan and Damiere for your thoughtful commentary and contributions to this post with your quotes.
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.
Welcome to the new entrant in the AGM Index, CVC Capital Partners, which went public this week. Alt Goes Mainstream wrote about CVC’s upcoming IPO in last week’s newsletter.
CVC’s shares opened above the offer price following an oversubscribed IPO which saw the offer size increase by €400M to €2B, highlighting investor demand for the stock.
Note: AUM figures are based on fee-paying AUM where applicable. Also, note that this week’s Market Cap % change last week and % YTD do not include CVC’s IPO. It was deemed to be best to wait until another week of trading to accurately phase in CVC’s figures and impact on the Index. Until we have the 10-Q / 10-K for shares outstanding or a count of how many shares were sold, the Index (consistent with CVC and CapIQ) will use the midpoint of shares outstanding until further data is published.
AGM News of the Week
Articles we are reading
📝 CVC shares jump in trading debut after long-awaited IPO | Will Louch, Financial Times
💡Financial Times’ Will Louch covers the debut of the CVC IPO, which had a strong debut. CVC opened at €17 on Friday, above the €14 offer price, implying a €14B market capitalization. According to CVC, the offering was multiple times oversubscribed by institutional investors globally, highlighting investor interest in both the company and private markets more broadly. Louch notes that part of the IPO was to enable existing shareholders in the business, including co-founder Donald Mackenzie and sovereign wealth funds GIC, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and Kuwait Investment Authority, to sell stakes. He also notes that current CVC employees, including co-founder Rolly Van Rappard, who chairs the group, and CEO Rob Lucas, are not selling any shares. CVC’s debut in public markets also represents the largest IPO by market cap for a European alternative asset manager. CVC’s €14B market capitalization at debut (and subsequent 24% jump in the share price on April 25th) bests EQT’s €6B market cap at listing in 2019 and Bridgepoint’s €3.3B market cap at listing in 2021.
CVC’s strong IPO also has broader implications for the European IPO market. As Europe’s second-biggest IPO of the year, it could prompt other European companies to consider a public offering after a quiet two years of listing activity.
Euronext CEO Stephane Boujnah told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that CVC’s robust performance is “a very strong signal of the comeback of IPOs in Europe, particularly continental Europe.”
💸 AGM’s 2/20: CVC’s IPO debut highlights investor demand for high-quality, growing alternative asset managers. It also signals something bigger: long-term bullishness on both CVC and private markets more broadly. A bet on CVC is, in some respects, a bet on the ability of one of Europe’s largest alternative asset managers to continue a growth trajectory that should see both increased AUM and further consolidation through acquisition. As I highlighted in last week’s AGM Weekly in my writing about CVC’s IPO, CVC will likely use its IPO proceeds to grow through acquisition. They now have additional currency to acquire specialist alternative asset managers as they look to chart their growth path. They’ve already done so with acquisitions of secondaries manager Glendower and infrastructure firm DIF, but expect to see further acquisitions in order to continue to expand the strategies they offer to LPs and explore ways to further expand their LP customer base. Growth through acquisition is one path that we’ve seen some of the public alternatives managers go down, with Blue Owl recently acquiring Kuvare, an investment management firm that provides asset management services to the insurance industry. I anticipate that we’ll see more consolidation in the industry as the big continue to get bigger. What will I be keeping an eye on now that CVC is in the public markets? The extent to which being public helps CVC’s ability to raise capital from the wealth channel now that it has an even more recognizable public brand.
📝 Blackstone says key to European wealth is lifting operational burdens | Margaryta Kirakosian, Citywire
💡Citywire’s Margaryta Kirakosian sat down with Blackstone’s Global COO for Private Wealth, Todd Myers, recently in London to discuss Blackstone’s presence in Europe and the growth of their private wealth business in the region. Myers shared some very insightful commentary on the European market and opportunities to simplify operational challenges with more streamlined solutions. The UK and Europe more broadly represent an increased area of focus for Blackstone, as evidenced by the firm breaking ground on a new office in Mayfair’s Berkeley Square. As Kirakosian reports, almost a fourth of Blackstone’s AUM, roughly $240B, comes from the wealth channel today. While Europe’s inflows from the wealth channel pale in comparison, Blackstone has been focused on growing these figures through partnerships with the region’s largest private banks. In the past five years, Blackstone has forged partnerships with HSBC, Danske Bank, Julius Baer, UniCredit, S-Pankki, ING, and BNP Paribas. The firm’s €652M European Private Credit fund appears to be the beneficiary of some of their recent bank partnerships. The BNP Paribas, S-Pankki, and UniCredit partnerships were crystallized in the past 18 months and involve Blackstone’s private credit funds. Myers is excited by the opportunities in Europe: “We still have more work to do around education and simplifying the processes, but we are very confident in the opportunities here in Europe. We see expansion as banks continue to build alternatives on their platforms.”
Myers cites operational burdens as a hurdle in increased adoption from the wealth channel. He also believes that the industry will come together to create solutions. “You will see much more streamlining, your financial adviser will be able to integrate alternatives within their client portfolios from the perspective of research and analysis, transaction processing, portfolio reporting,” he said. Myers highlights iCapital as an example of a technology platform that can be integrated into the systems of wealth management firms. He also notes that both holistic portfolio construction and curation of portfolios and investment opportunities will be critical to bringing more advisors into alternatives. He believes that asset managers like Blackstone have a role to play in helping wealth managers and financial advisors curate portfolios based on clients’ liquidity considerations, investment objectives, risk tolerance, and long-term goals. Myers said that this is an area of focus for Blackstone: “We’re spending a lot of time on that and intend to build that out and deliver that into the market shortly.”
💸 AGM’s 2/20: Myers has his finger on the pulse of both the promise and challenges of working with the wealth channel. There’s certainly an opportunity for alternative asset managers to grow their presence within the wealth channel — and to do so in Europe. Kirakosian’s interview with Myers highlights a few key trends and questions that are on the minds of many in private markets:
(1) Myers affirms private banks’ importance in private markets. This is even more true in Europe. I’ve said in the past that private banks will still represent the lion’s share of the inflows into private markets in the near term due to the structure they have internally to diligence, onboard, and allocate to alternative investments. This trend should continue to persist, particularly in Europe, where the wealth management market structure is even more dominated by private banks. There are also a limited number of slots on a private bank’s investment menu for alternatives managers. This situation will lead to a meaningful amount of competition between alternative asset managers to secure one of the coveted slots on bank investment platforms. It will also mean that slightly smaller private banks and the large independent wealth platforms will become the next battleground for alternative asset managers. The largest alternative asset managers with the most recognizable brands will likely have a leg up with many of the largest bank platforms. Will the alternative asset managers, one level down in size from the largest players look to go to the smaller private banks and wealth platforms? If so, how will they manage to focus on this channel with less resources and capital directed towards private wealth?
(2) Operational challenges are still aplenty when working with the wealth channel. Yes, there are a number of technology companies working to solve these hurdles, some even working with the largest alternative asset managers to do so. The big question is where does the industry come together to solve these problems, or where do alternative asset managers try to build these capabilities in-house?
📝 Private Credit Makes Money for Managers. For Their LPs? Not So Much | Alicia McElhaney, Institutional Investor
💡Institutional Investor’s Alicia McElhaney reports on research that shows that while private credit funds may be lucrative for the investment managers, that may not always be the case for limited partners. Private credit has garnered a lot of interest from allocators as interest rates rose higher and banks pulled back from their lending activities. McElhaney cites a working paper from academics at The Ohio State University, Isil Erel, Thomas Flanagan, and Michael Weisbach, to call into question the amount of alpha private credit firms are generating for their limited partners. The academics employed a relatively new method to evaluate the risk-adjusted returns of private credit assets, which regresses the cash flow of assets onto the payoffs of publicly traded benchmarks. McElhaney writes, “This approach, applied to private debt, can help price cash flows, with adjustments for differences in those at the loan and fund level. Using that method, they found that abnormal private credit returns adjusted for both debt and equity risk, were “indistinguishable” from zero. Adjusted only for corporate debt risk factors, the net alpha on a fund is 1.8 percent. But they point out that private credit instruments have elements of both debt and equity risk.” The researchers used data from Burgiss-MSCI to generate information from LPs on distributions, contributions, and net asset values of a sample of 532 private credit funds between 1992-2015 that had an average fund size of $783M, an average IRR of the net-of-fee cashflows to limited partners of 8.6% and an average duration of distribution of 5.5 years. The researchers look into promised returns across a number of vectors: “Promised returns must be large enough to offset the probability of default, the systematic risk of these defaults, and also the fees that the fund earns. Consequently, promised returns on loans from debt funds are substantially higher than the promised returns on bank loans or even risky bonds.” The study finds that based on their calculations after incorporating corporate bond risks, investors earn 11 cents for every dollar invested, generating 1.8% alpha. When researchers added in equity risk, they found that investors earn 5 cents for every dollar invested.
💸 AGM’s 2/20: While there is still a dearth of academic research on private credit funds, as the researchers note, this paper brings rise to a number of interesting questions about private credit risk and performance. The researchers incorporate equity factors to capture the fact that, in their view, risk and return analysis on private credit funds should include equity factors because private debt fund loans are “substantially riskier than most other debt, and also because roughly 20% of their portfolios include equity features.” This point is particularly interesting as private credit funds step in to fill the gap left by banks. The researchers note that the borrowers who end up working with private credit funds are inherently riskier than firms that receive bank loans since borrowers often go to private debt funds when they are unable to obtain bank financing. The researchers argue that it’s important for an analysis of private credit returns to factor in this equity risk. They note that when compared to other debt instruments, private credit returns look “more attractive than they actually are.”
The researchers provide interesting food for thought. I’m sure proponents of private credit will have their views that (1) if their underwriting is sound and in certain portions of the market, then there may have to be a finer analysis of the definition of risk, (2) that bank’s retrenchment from lending should lead to the ability to underwrite higher-quality borrowers at the right risk-adjusted prices, and (3) that it’s worth investors’ paying fees to private credit strategies because of funds’ ability to source, underwrite, negotiate, and manage these investments in a way that other investors cannot. Those are valid arguments, too. The most important point in this debate? Something that Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson shared on her Alt Goes Mainstream podcast: that it’s returns net of fees that matter most. Private markets strategies — whether equity or debt — have their place in investors’ portfolios. That’s for sure. The big question for allocators should be: net of fees, can this investment perform better or worse than another way to access this market or strategy? Whether or not people in private markets agree or disagree with the results of this research paper, it does serve to help move the conversations about the impact of private markets investment strategies forward. And that’s a good thing.
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.
🔍 Apollo (Alternative asset manager) - Distribution & Wealth Services Associate. Click here to learn more.
🔍 iCapital (Private markets infrastructure investment platform) - US Asset Management Channel, Business Development - Managing Director. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Blue Owl (Alternative asset manager) - VP / Principal, Private Wealth Market Leader. Click here to learn more.
🔍 AltExchange (Alternative asset management data) - Inside Sales Rep for MFOs / RIAs / SFOs. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Brown Advisory (Independent investment management & strategic advisory firm) - Alternative Asset Specialist. Click hear to learn more.
🔍 Canoe Intelligence (Alternative asset management data) - Growth Marketing Manager, Wealth Management. Click here to learn more.
🔍 73 Strings (Portfolio monitoring and valuation) - Associate Vice President - Private Credit. Click here to learn more.
🔍 Allianz SE (Asset manager) - Strategist, Group Strategy and Portfolio Management (Munich). Click here to learn more.
🔍 PitchBook (Private markets media, data, analytics) - Reporter, Private Equity (London). Click here to learn more.
The latest on Alt Goes Mainstream
Recent podcast or video episodes and blog posts on Alt Goes Mainstream:
🎥 Watch Lawrence Calcano, Chairman & CEO at iCapital, and I welcome special guest Haig Ariyan, CEO of Arax Investment Partners, as we take the pulse of private markets on the 9th episode of our monthly show, the Monthly Alts Pulse. We discuss the evolution of wealth management and the role that alts can and should play in wealth client portfolios. Watch here.
🎙 Hear Yieldstreet Founder & CEO Michael Weisz discuss how to deliver private markets investment opportunities directly to consumers. Listen here.
🎥 Watch internet pioneer Steve Case, Chairman & CEO of Revolution and Co-Founder of America Online, share lessons learned from building the first internet company to go public and an investment firm built for the Third Wave of the internet. Watch & listen here.
🎙 Hear Hamilton Lane, Managing Director & Head of Technology Solutions Griff Norville share why he believes private markets are moving from the Stone Age to the digital age. Listen here.
🎙 Hear Carlyle Operating Partner & Net Health CEO Ron Books discuss lessons learned from growing ECi Software Solutions to $500M revenue and $200M EBITDA and working with private equity. Listen here.
🎙 Hear Blue Owl’s Global Private Wealth President & CEO Sean Connor share insights and lessons learned from working with the wealth channel. Listen here.
🎙 Hear Blackstone CTO John Stecher discuss how technology is transforming private markets. Listen 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 Patrick McGowan, MD and Head of Alternative Investments, and Oksana Poznak, Director of Strategic Partnerships of $28B Sanctuary Wealth on working with the wealth channel. Listen here.
🎥 Watch me talk with David Weisburd of 10X Capital Podcast about why the wealth channel is becoming a centerpiece of the LP universe, drawing on my experience helping to build the wealth channel at iCapital as an early, pre-product employee and our investments at Broadhaven Ventures in private markets technology. Watch here.
🎥 Watch the replay of the fireside chat at Future Proof decoding the rise of alts with some of the most influential players in private markets: Stephanie Drescher, Partner, Chief Client & Product Development Officer, and member of the Leadership Team at Apollo, and Shannon Saccocia, the CIO at Neuberger Berman Private Wealth. Watch here.
🎙 Hear Chris Ailman, the CIO of $307B CalSTRS, discuss how he manages a portfolio with ~40% exposure to private markets. Listen here.
🎙 Hear the incredible story of “tech’s most unlikely venture capitalist,” Pejman Nozad, Co-Founder & Founding Managing Partner of Pear VC, on how they’ve built a seed investing powerhouse. Listen here.
🎙 Hear wealth management industry titan Haig Ariyan, CEO of Arax Investment Partners, share his thoughts on the private equity opportunity in wealth management and why the intersection of wealth and alts is one of the biggest trends in private markets. Listen here.
📝 Read how 73 Strings CEO & Co-Founder Yann Magnan and team are leveraging AI to build a modern and holistic monitoring and valuation platform for private markets in The AGM Q&A. Read here.
🎙 Hear Robert Picard, Head of Alternatives at $117B AUM Hightower, discusses how they approach alternative investments. Listen here.
Thank you for reading. If you like the Alts Weekly, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone interested in private markets.
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If you have any suggestions, would like me to feature an article, research, or would like to recommend a guest or topic for the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast, reach out! I’d love to include it in my next post or on a future podcast.
Special thanks to Michael Rutter and Nick Owens for their contributions to the newsletter.