Agenda

The Secondaries Investor Forum is curated around the decisions buyers and sellers are making now – pricing portfolios when the marks are hard to trust, weighing continuation vehicles where the sponsor sets the price, and finding value in a market where the old discounts have largely gone. Across multiple sessions you get a full understanding on where pricing, structure and seller behavior are heading, and what it takes to underwrite with conviction.

Key sessions:

• Pricing dislocation – capital overhang has compressed returns in the crowded middle of the market while niche segments stay underserved.
  • Question for session: Where does paying par or premium still leave room to make money?
• GP-led secondaries and single-asset continuation vehicles – volumes have grown fast, and LPs are rewriting the consent, transparency and pricing standards they expect in return. 
  • Question for session: What does alignment look like when a manager sits on both sides of the deal?
• LP-led selling – institutional allocators are coming to market by choice, trimming portfolios that have outgrown their private equity target.
  • Question for session: What gets a deal closed when buyer and seller cannot agree what a portfolio is worth?
• Credit secondaries – distressed sellers, portfolio rebalancing and the maturation of private credit funds are building a market in assets that carry no transparent marks. 
  • Question for session: How do buyers underwrite risk when the marks are opaque?

The Mid-Market Forum is curated around the pressures facing managers in the core middle market – creating value without large in-house teams, finding exits while traditional routes stay narrow, and maintaining LP confidence as holding periods extend and distributions slow. Across multiple sessions you get a read on what allocators now require of a mid-market manager, and what separates real operational change from activity that looks good on paper.

Key sessions:

• Founder-backed deals – professional governance has to be built into a founder-run business without losing the trust the deal was built on, and cultural mismatches are hardest to spot before it closes.
  • Question for session: How much should cultural fit count against the numbers?
• Routes to liquidity – strategic buyers are active in fewer sectors, and selling to another private equity firm brings its own tensions when every firm is both buyer and seller.
  • Question for session: How do managers keep investors patient while exit routes stay narrow?
• Value creation and the AI question – buy-and-build is being reassessed as borrowing costs rise, and AI is eroding the advantages that justified many mid-market software valuations.
  • Question for session: Is AI a real way to add value, or a risk to the case for holding?
• The investor verdict – allocators now look as hard at cash actually returned, exit visibility and pacing as they do at headline returns.
  • Question for session: Does the mid-market still earn its place in a portfolio?

The Private Wealth Forum is curated around the questions advisers and managers face as the channel opens – which structures genuinely work for individual clients, how to choose managers at volume, and how to set expectations before the money goes in rather than during a bad quarter. Across seven sessions you get the fluency and selection discipline to allocate with confidence, and a direct line to the institutional side of the market.

Key sessions:

• Access and adoption – wealth portfolios are shifting into private markets across every client segment and managers are building the distribution and servicing infrastructure to compete for the channel.
  • Question for session: Do products built for individuals match what institutions get or fall short?
• Portfolio construction – advisers are blending evergreen funds, interval funds, direct deals and co-investment across client accounts and family office portfolios.
  • Question for session: What does proper research look like when you assess fifty managers a year instead of five?
• Education and suitability – quarterly valuations, withdrawal limits and lock-up terms need translating into plain client language, ideally before the money goes in.
  • Question for session: How should advisers handle client questions when values move the wrong way?
• Private credit for wealth – direct lending, asset-backed and specialty finance are being positioned as shorter-dated alternatives to bonds.
  • Question for session: Which platforms perform consistently and which are simply riding low interest rates?

The New Private Markets Investor Forum is curated around where capital is actually flowing across climate, energy transition and natural capital – which themes are investable today, how to place assets that are neither pure infrastructure nor pure private equity, and what AI's appetite for power and water means for anyone holding decarbonization goals. Across multiple sessions you get an allocator-level read on what is financeable now.

Key sessions:

• Allocator outlook – investors are building strategies around long-term structural opportunities while managing the same liquidity constraints as the rest of the portfolio.
  • Question for session: Which themes are genuinely investable today?
• Energy investment and security – AI demand has reset the outlook in North America and companies are increasingly solving their own energy supply.
  • Question for session: Can the rush to build power for data centers take a sustainable course?
• High-return infrastructure – a growing set of energy and climate assets behaves like infrastructure and private equity at once, which makes them awkward to place in a portfolio.
  • Question for session: Which bucket do these assets actually belong in?
• Food systems and natural capital – food supply chain resilience, land and ocean-based sustainability and nature investing are moving from theory into actual deals.
  • Question for session: How investable are nature and food system assets today?

The Emerging Manager Forum is curated around the realities of raising and building a firm while investors consolidate relationships – longer fundraises, harder questions about track record, and an institutional bar to clear before a first close. Across multiple sessions you get a candid read on what allocators require of a first-time fund, and what early capital costs in economics and control.

Key sessions:

• From first close to fund II – LPs are backing fewer managers and fundraises keep taking longer, which puts team stability and investor confidence into what is being judged.
  • Question for session: What does a first-time fund need in place before an LP will commit?
• Differentiation and edge – a strategy has to be genuinely hard for better-resourced competitors to copy, and lean on the advantages only smaller funds have.
  • Question for session: What makes an emerging manager worth backing when the record is short?
• Institutional standards from day one – administration, legal and compliance have to meet investor expectations without eating a disproportionate share of the fees.
  • Question for session: Which of those investments most influences whether an LP says yes?
• LP appetite, seeding and anchors – some investor types still actively back new managers, and the seed and anchor market has changed since 2022.
  • Question for session: What does it take for an LP to justify writing that early check?