Private Equity Spotlight

In this episode, senior reporter Carmela Mendoza sits down with Sabina Comis, global managing partner, and Kenneth Young, a partner and co-chair of the corporate and securities practice at Dechert, to unpack key findings from the law firm's 2026 Global Private Equity Outlook. The survey results, gathered from 100 senior-level executives at global PE firms with at least $2.5 billion in AUM, highlight creative deal structures and the importance of distributions for LPs. The results provide insight into where the asset class may be heading in the next 12 months. The discussion centres on the gradual thawing of traditional exit channels. The pair outline the most promising opportunities for capital deployment in 2026. The episode also explores why more GPs plan to make management stake divestitures in the next 24 months and the regional differences behind them; how capital pools are developing to keep companies private for longer; and why future product design of semi-liquid funds could address concerns around valuations.

This episode is sponsored by Lexington Partners, LGT Capital Partners and Davis Polk and first appeared on Secondaries Investor's Second Thoughts podcast. In 2024, GP-led deals hit a record of $71 billion in transaction volume, accounting for 44 percent of the total secondaries market volume of $160 billion, according to Evercore’s FY 2024 Secondary Market Review. This is significant and marks the increasing popularity of continuation vehicles as an exit route. In this episode, Secondaries Investor senior editor Adam Le is joined by Lexington Partners’ Jeffrey Bloom, LGT Capital Partners’ Brooke Zhou and Davis Polk’s Leor Landa. The trio explore how GP-led transactions have rapidly grown into a mainstream liquidity and portfolio-management tool, against a backdrop of constrained exit markets, rising LP demand for liquidity and increasing GP comfort with continuation vehicles. They also examine market dynamics across deal sizes, noting the challenges of scaling mega single-asset vehicles and the significant untapped opportunity in the mid-market, where many GPs are still early in their GP-led journeys. Brooke Zhou is a partner at LGT Capital Partners in Hong Kong, an investment committee member, and is responsible for origination, due diligence, execution and monitoring of Asian primary and secondary investments Jeffrey Bloom is a partner on the secondaries team at Lexington Partners focused on the origination, evaluation and execution of continuation vehicle transactions Leor Landa is a partner and head of investment management at Davis Polk Adam Le is senior editor, EMEA, Private Equity Group, at PEI Group

This episode is sponsored by Manulife Investment Management and first appeared on The PERE Podcast 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.

This episode is sponsored by Bravo Capital and first appeared on The PERE Podcast The lending landscape is shifting, and private credit is taking center stage. In this episode, Bravo Capital founder and CEO Aaron Krawitz discusses how his firm is navigating a market defined by bank pullbacks, rising regulation and persistent demand for rental housing. Krawitz outlines where opportunities are emerging: ground-up multifamily construction, healthcare and skilled nursing facilities, and HUD-backed permanent financing. As traditional lenders retrench, these areas are seeing renewed activity from private lenders that can move quickly and tailor structures to complex projects. He also reflects on how Bravo has adapted since launching at the height of the pandemic, emphasizing the importance of a disciplined approach and alignment with investors through shifting market conditions. That ethos, he says, has supported a focus on quality borrowers, measured construction exposure and long-term partnerships over loan volume metrics. Across development financing, bridge loans and HUD takeouts, Bravo sees a broader trend in real estate credit: private lenders are leading the way with financings, even amid market uncertainty.

This episode is sponsored by Francisco Partners and Platinum Equity Dealmakers had high hopes for 2025, expecting the year to deliver a welcoming environment for M&A. Instead, uncertainty about tariffs and other issues stopped them in their tracks mid-year, and deal volume dropped. Exits have been especially challenging. But now as the year draws to a close, some clarity has returned to the market, and the number of completed transactions is rising once again. Many say the elusive rebound is just around the corner. In this episode, PE Hub editor-in-chief Mary Kathleen Flynn speaks with Dipanjan 'DJ' Deb, co-founder and CEO of Francisco Partners, and Louis Samson, co-president of Platinum Equity, to find out how dealmakers are navigating the current conditions and what they're foreseeing for 2026.

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners The Disruption Matters special podcast miniseries is back for its fourth season, and this year, leading industry experts will discuss how private markets can still deliver growth, despite the headwinds of a revolution in tech, geopolitics and global markets. All season long, we’ve argued that PE firms need to pursue growth even in times of uncertainty and volatility. But in our final episode of the year, we’re clarifying that not all growth is created equal. The right kind of growth is cost-effective and sustainable. We explore the threats to sustainable growth, the need to shape growth strategies around exit routes, how buy-and-build strategies can go awry, and how to pause a growth strategy without stalling the company’s progress. Guests include Jason McDannold, co-lead of the PE practice at AlixPartners; Halvor Horten, partner at Bain Capital; Jennifer Fox Bensimon, a managing director on the co-investment team of Partners Capital Investment Group; Emanuela Cisini, a partner and head of Middle East & Asia at Investindustrial; and Burak Kiral, a partner and managing director with AlixPartners.

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners The Disruption Matters special podcast miniseries is back for its fourth season, and this year, leading industry experts discuss how private markets can still deliver growth, despite the headwinds of a revolution in tech, geopolitics and global markets. In our fifth episode this season, we focus on best practices in planning for 2026 that allow portcos to hit the ground running in pursuit of growth. This means building the plan around customer pain points and preferences, with leaders freeing up resources both in terms of finances and human capital to win more business in the new year. In many ways, this is when to apply the principles around human capital, tech and innovation that we’ve been discussing all season long. Guests include Jason McDannold, Americas co-leader of private equity at AlixPartners; Bob Brown, founding partner of Motive Partners; Hoyoung Pak, chief AI officer at AlixPartners; Gunnar Overstrom, a partner with Corsair Capital; and Saurabh Singh, a partner with AlixPartners.

This episode is sponsored by Cain International and Arrow Global and first appeared on The PERE Podcast After several years defined by rising rates and pricing uncertainty, Europe’s property market may be at an inflection point. Jay Patel, managing director at Arrow Global, and Arvi Luoma, who heads Cain International’s European investment committee, share perspectives on how capital is rebalancing toward the continent in this special episode. Patel notes that allocators from the US, Middle East and beyond are looking to Europe in ways they weren’t just a year ago, opening the door for both credit and equity strategies. Luoma, meanwhile, emphasizes that valuations appear to have bottomed and that green shoots are starting to show as financing conditions stabilize. The two also highlight where opportunities are clearest: Germany’s distressed construction projects, Southern Europe’s structural tourism boom, student housing, and continued undersupply in residential and hospitality. Data centers and logistics remain attractive, while ESG regulation – once seen as a hurdle – is increasingly embedded in business plans, shaping how new assets are built and old ones are repositioned. Taken together, their outlook is one of cautious optimism. Core capital is beginning to return, early movers are testing distressed opportunities, and Europe’s mix of stability, rule of law and long-term demand drivers are drawing greater global interest.

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners The Disruption Matters special podcast miniseries is back for its fourth season, and this year, leading industry experts will discuss how private markets can still deliver growth, despite the headwinds of a revolution in tech, geopolitics and global markets. In our fourth episode this season, we focus on how best to drive innovation at portfolio companies, and how to ensure such efforts deliver on their promise. That means finding the Goldilocks level of structure that measures and substantiates the process, without smothering good ideas with bureaucracy. Guests include Lara Nemerov, a partner with Alix Partners; Jason McDannold, Americas co-leader of private equity at AlixPartners; Hoyoung Pak, chief AI officer at AlixPartners; John Griffin, a partner with the Sterling Group; and Ben Hanessian, a principal of Baird Capital’s portfolio operations.

This episode is sponsored by Brookfield In recent years, industrials and manufacturing companies have attracted relatively modest levels of interest from private equity managers. However, a reappraisal may now be overdue. In the US and other developed markets, trade tariffs and the need for more resilient supply chains are driving a resurgence in homegrown industrials. And given the advent of new technologies – including artificial intelligence – the opportunities around reimagining processes and finding valuable efficiencies could be huge. In this episode, Anuj Ranjan, CEO of Brookfield’s private equity group, and David Bonasia, a managing partner and head of operations for the firm’s Americas group, explain why industrials could offer excellent openings for PE investors. After all, companies in this space tend to avoid the drastic swings in valuations that have been problematic for investors in other sectors, they say. And with AI on hand to boost value creation efforts, there’s plenty of upside to capture.

This episode is sponsored by Lexington Partners, Proskauer and StepStone Group and first appeared on Secondaries Investor's Second Thoughts podcast The secondaries market is benefitting from private markets' push into the private wealth space, with managers either launching secondaries-focused vehicles or secondaries making up a meaningful component of many evergreen funds. Evergreen funds raised $16 billion in the first half of 2025 alone, 60 percent of which is dedicated to secondaries capital, according to estimates from Campbell Lutyens included in its H1 Secondary Market Overview Report. In this episode, Secondaries Investor editor Madeleine Farman is joined by Lexington Partners' Taylor Robinson and StepStone Group's Brian Borton, both of whose organisations run evergreen vehicles deploying into the secondaries market. Proskauer’s head of its registered fund group John Mahon also joins the conversation. In the wide-ranging conversation, Mahon, Borton and Robinson discuss appropriate ways to structure these vehicles, where to invest evergreen capital, regulatory updates, the long-term trajectory for these vehicles, and how they may impact the secondaries market.

At a time when distributions from private equity funds are slowing and GPs are holding on to assets for longer instead of selling them and returning cash to investors, many LPs may be wondering whether to hold off on making fresh commitments to PE funds. While this might be tempting, it's just about the worst thing an investor can do, says Tim Yates, president and chief executive of Commonfund Outsourced CIO, which offers investment advice and manages capital for non-profit perpetual pools of assets, such as colleges, university endowments, foundations and other charitable organisations. The firm over the summer published a white paper, Mind the Gap: The Strategic Risk of Skipping a Vintage in Private Equity, which explores the downsides of making inconsistent commitments to PE funds. "We continue to believe there's return generation potential from private markets and that those over time will outperform public markets," Yates says. "You need great managers to be able to do that, [but] it's really hard and can be expensive to time vintage your cycles." In this episode, Yates discusses the three core principles that private markets investors should keep at the front of their mind when faced with a challenging investment environment; why the secondaries market isn't necessarily a panacea for vintage diversification; the risks of skipping a vintage; and whether manager selection is more important than consistent annual commitments.

This episode is sponsored by Arrow Global and first appeared on The PERE Podcast Germany’s property market is facing the highest insolvency rate in Europe. Years of cheap credit and rising prices encouraged aggressive development, but when interest rates jumped, buyers paused, sales collapsed and projects ran out of cash. The result: a wave of bankruptcies across the sector. However, in this episode, CEO of Arrow Global Germany Bernhard Hansen explains that there’s opportunity within this dislocation. Stalled projects and smaller developments are waiting for investors with the expertise and capital to finish them. With housing demand far outpacing supply, especially in cities like Munich, he believes there is still strong long-term potential. That potential of course comes with challenges: stricter sustainability rules, tougher financing conditions, and wary buyers mean projects take longer and require deeper due diligence. Yet Hansen is optimistic. International investors and alternative lenders are stepping in, and he says the correction is less of an ending, and more of a recalibration of Germany’s real estate market.

No trend has taken the private equity industry by storm quite like that of semi-liquid and evergreen funds. Data from consultancy Bfinance shows that at least $30 billion has been raised via private equity semi-liquid funds since 2020 – a figure that represents just 10 percent of the overall semi-liquids universe. In this episode, Ajay Pathak, a partner and co-chair of Goodwin’s UK business, joins PEI senior editor Adam Le to discuss how management fees and carried interest are calculated; whether the typical 2-and-20 model prevalent in traditional drawdown funds make sense to apply to semi-liquid funds; whether charging carried interest on net asset value on both a realised and unrealised basis really make sense; and more.

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners The Disruption Matters special podcast miniseries is back for its fourth season, and this year, leading industry experts discuss how private markets can deliver “weatherproof growth”, despite the headwinds of a tech revolution, geopolitics and volatile global markets. In our third episode this season, we focus on how best to decide where, when and how to use AI tools to deliver growth, no matter the weather. These are groundbreaking technologies, but like any other tool, they’re only as good as the people using them. Even today, the buck still stops at the human leadership of the portfolio company and the private equity firm. Guests include Jeremy Lehman, a director at Alix Partners; Jason McDannold, Americas co-leader of private equity at AlixPartners; Hoyoung Pak, global co-leader, AI and data, at AlixPartners; Sanjay Ravi, managing director at Partners Group; Lou D’Ambrosio, the co-lead of Goldman Sach’s global portfolio operations and value accelerator; Cory Eaves, partner and head of portfolio operations at BayPine; and Jay Park, the co-founder and managing partner of Prysm Capital. For further reading on this show’s topics: Practical AI For Private Equity Operating Partners | AlixPartners

Tariff turmoil, trade wars and real conflict in the Middle East – these are just some of the challenges private equity participants have had to navigate so far this year. Speaking to senior editor Adam Le, David Gross, co-managing partner at Bain Capital, said volatility and uncertainty is nothing new for investors. “I’d be the first to agree that it’s a very disorienting time period,” Gross said. He points out, however, that volatility and uncertainty have characterised almost the past two decades. “Since the global financial crisis, we’ve seen heightened volatility in the investing world. If you just look at the VIX [volatility index] and other metrics, and the market windows that are open in the public market, you’ve seen heightened volatility." Gross, who has been with the firm for 25 years and is also managing partner of Asia, discusses what effective investors need in uncertain environments, the attraction of defence investing in Europe, the exit environment, and why the firm has no current plans to launch a secondaries investment business.

This episode is sponsored by Bouwinvest Real Estate Investors and first appeared on The PERE Podcast The Dutch residential market has remained resilient despite economic turbulence and rising interest rates and is now emerging as a prime destination for international investors. In this episode, Paul van Stiphout of Bouwinvest Real Estate Investors and Jorrit Arissen of Van Lanschot Kempen Investment Management unpack the forces driving the market’s strength – from a deep-rooted rental culture and robust occupancy levels to increasing demand for senior and student housing. With the Netherlands facing a housing shortfall, Van Stiphout and Arissen discuss how foreign capital will be essential to bridge the gap. They also explore how demographic trends and public funding cuts are creating opportunities in niche sectors, such as senior living, which saw investment jump to €724 million in 2024.

This episode is sponsored by Pomona Capital and Proskauer and first appeared on Secondaries Investor's Second Thoughts podcast While the Trump administration's tariff announcements and the subsequent unfurling of uncertainty globally does create some headaches, it also creates a tailwind for the LP-led secondaries market. "What the market has trouble adjusting to is uncertainty. And what happens in times of uncertainty, like the times we're dealing in now, is that [M&A and IPO] transactions tend to pull away," Michael Granoff, founder and chief executive of Pomona Capital, said in this episode. "That uncertainty does tend to push more sellers into the secondary market... And so, in a funny way, it's not that we're uncorrelated to the world – we are – but on the other side of things, all of those things that keep us up at night that we're talking about actually create more opportunity for a buyer in the secondaries market." While market participants continued to put their heads down and get deals done that were far along when the tariff announcements occurred, secondaries professionals are still working to digest second- and third-order impacts, Galen Lewis, a partner in Proskauer's private funds group, explained. "Normally, distress of some sort is something that creates additional volume in the secondaries market." In this far-reaching discussion, Granoff and Lewis discuss a variety of issues affecting the LP-led market and the drivers of underlying deal volume, including the regulatory developments that may spur or hinder LP-led portfolio sales in the coming year, the rise of '40 Act capital, as well as new entrants.

This episode is sponsored by AlixPartners The Disruption Matters special podcast miniseries is back for its fourth season, and this year, leading industry experts will discuss how private markets can deliver “weatherproof growth”, despite the headwinds of a tech revolution, geopolitics and volatile global markets. In this second episode, we focus on how best to assess, manage and, where necessary, recruit leaders capable of delivering growth in the face of such macroeconomic uncertainty. We learn about the very special “PhDs” that are fit for the moment, how technology can help with such a task, and how analog issues still matter most when it comes to leadership. Guests include Ted Bililies, global co-leader of transformative leadership at AlixPartners; Jason McDannold, Americas co-leader of private equity at AlixPartners; Hoyoung Pak, global co-leader, AI and data at AlixPartners; Allison Walker, head of talent for FTV Capital; Tyler Wolfram, managing partner of Oak Hill Capital Partners; Ditte Marstrand Wulf, head of leadership and culture at Triton; Andrew Weinberg, founder, CEO and co-chair of Brightstar Capital Partners; and Erik Brooks, founder and managing partner of Ethos Capital. For further reading on this show’s topics: Transformative Leadership: What it is and why it matters The Golden Age Of AI Experimentation For CEOs | AlixPartners (part one of two) AI Alone Won’t See Companies Succeed: Leadership Will | AlixPartners (part two of two) Clips Any Given Sunday, Oliver Stone, Warner Bros. Patton, Franklin J Schaffner, 20th Century Fox Stand and Deliver, Ramón Menéndez, Warner Bros.

Having navigated headwinds from interest rate hikes and secular shifts in office usage and online shopping in recent years, the US commercial mortgage-backed securities market was seemingly embracing a full resurgence. In 2024, its origination hit a record $104.05 billion, a 165 percent increase from the previous year.   While that momentum continued into the first quarter of 2025, it stumbled when the overall capital markets were taken on a volatile ride after the Trump administration’s announcement in April about massive changes in tariffs. As a result, April was a much quieter month for CMBS. Deals got pulled or paused, and there were fewer loans priced.   Borrowers, issuers and bond buyers told PERE Credit that although the activities were slowed down by the unprecedented market volatility, the market stabilized swiftly, with spreads gradually grinding back and new originations returning going into May.  Often viewed as a barometer of the broader commercial real estate market, the sector’s swift recovery after market turmoil signals the resilience of the industry in an uncertain macroeconomic environment. In this episode, Zachary Cohn, managing director at Brookfield Asset Management, and James Stouse, senior director of CMBS credit research at Barings, shared their observations on the CMBS resurgence.  For more insights on this, see PERE Credit‘s June/July cover story.