Tag: private chat

Drawing on more than two decades of empirical research and extensive back-testing, Professor Oliver Gottschalg explains why algorithmic decision support can outperform “normal” human allocation, particularly in fund selection and secondaries pricing, without relying on better data or privileged access.

In this episode, we look at sets out how machine learning can be applied to private markets and why they are structurally better suited to algorithmic allocation than public markets.

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The big take

• Machine learning can materially improve PE outcomes. The first step to demonstrate this: re-weighting existing fund portfolios – and that’s before we get to portfolio construction.
• Prediction now matters more than explanation once decision-making crosses a complexity threshold
• Secondaries are meaningfully inefficient, creating scope for systematic pricing and portfolio construction
• Data does not need to be perfect to be useful, but models must be rigorously back-tested
• Human judgement still matters, but only as a downside governor, not a source of optimism or narrative bias

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Who is Oliver Gottschalg, and why does his work matter?

Oliver Gottschalg is one of the most widely cited academics in private markets. He holds degrees from Karlsruhe, Georgia State University and INSEAD, teaches private equity and buyouts at HEC Paris, and directs the HEC Private Equity Certificate. Alongside his academic work, he founded Gottschalg Analytics, a data and analytics platform used by LPs and GPs to analyse risk, return drivers and manager skill in private equity.

His work sits at the intersection of academic rigour and real-world allocation, making him unusually well placed to assess what machine learning can and cannot do in private markets.

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Can algorithms really outperform human allocators in private equity?

Oliver shows that algorithmic decision support can outperform a large proportion of real-world allocation decisions, especially where humans are asked to weigh dozens of interacting variables consistently over time.

Using conservative back-tests on US public pension data, he demonstrates that modest re-weighting within existing fund commitments, guided by machine learning predictions, would have produced billions of dollars of incremental value. Crucially, this improvement does not rely on better access, new strategies or hindsight.

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Why private markets suit machine learning better than public markets

A common objection to back-tested strategies is that alpha disappears once deployed. Private markets are structurally different.

Private equity transactions are discrete, opaque and slow-moving. Trades are not immediately visible, and algorithmic activity does not automatically move prices in the same way as public markets. This means predictive models are less likely to be arbitraged away quickly, particularly in areas such as secondaries.

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How machine learning changes secondaries pricing

One of the most compelling parts of the discussion focuses on LP-led secondaries. 

Oliver argues that the secondary market is inefficient in a technical sense: prices paid for fund stakes correlate weakly with ultimate forward returns.

Instead of relying on bottom-up portfolio company valuation, his approach asks different questions:

• How conservative or aggressive is a GP’s valuation policy?
• How much future value-creation capacity does the GP realistically have?
• Are team focus, strategy drift or asset mix likely to impair outcomes?

Machine learning allows these factors to be weighted simultaneously, creating a systematic approach to pricing and portfolio construction that could materially lower the cost of liquidity in private markets.

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Imperfect data is not the real problem

Private equity data is incomplete, inconsistent and often delayed. Oliver is explicit about this. His point is that perfection is not the bar. The relevant question is whether imperfect data, treated consistently, still points investors towards relative outperformance.

After thousands of back-tests across different periods and market regimes, his conclusion is pragmatic: if a model survives conservative testing and structural change, it can be trusted as a decision support tool.

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The trade-off between transparency and predictive power

As models become more complex, interpretability declines. Oliver is candid about this “black box” problem. Once a model incorporates dozens of interacting features, causal explanation becomes impractical.

Trust is therefore built not through narrative clarity, but through:

• disciplined training and validation
• conservative assumptions
• repeated evidence that predictions remain robust across cycles

This represents a cultural shift for an industry accustomed to storytelling.

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The role of humans in an algorithm-assisted future

But relax, humans are not removed from the process. Instead, their role changes.

Humans should be able to override models only to reduce expected returns, never to inflate them. If there is information the model cannot yet see, such as team departures or governance issues, the human can step in. What the human should not do is override the model upward based on brand, relationships or confidence.

He likens this to advanced driver assistance systems: the machine does most of the work, while the human prevents catastrophic error.

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What this means for LPs, GPs and the wider market

For LPs, this challenges the idea that superior judgement alone is a durable edge in fund selection. Discipline, calibration and governance may matter more.

For GPs and secondary managers, it raises uncomfortable questions about fee structures and defensibility as parts of the investment process become systematised.

At a market level, Oliver outlines a plausible path towards lower-cost, more scalable private market products, potentially expanding access without relying solely on distribution or regulatory change.

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Why this episode matters

This is not a discussion about hype or distant futures. It is a grounded, evidence-led examination of what machine learning is already capable of in private equity, where it fits, and where human judgement remains essential.

Cyril Demaria-Bengochea is Head of Private Market Strategy at Julius Baer, Associate Professor at EDHEC Business School, and the author of several leading books on private equity. He has also advised Invest Europe, ILPA, and the European Commission, which gives him a rare vantage point across academic evidence, investor governance, and the day-to-day realities of portfolio construction for private wealth.

In this conversation, Ross and Cyril pick apart what is really changing in private markets right now. Fundraising and exits may be slower, but innovation has accelerated, particularly in structures designed to connect institutional managers with the bespoke needs of private clients.

Hyper-novelty in private markets: innovation as a response to constraints

Cyril agrees innovation is native to the industry, but argues the current wave is also a rational response to market conditions: higher rates, slower exits, and more pressure to provide liquidity without forcing sales.

That dynamic has pushed tools like continuation funds and GP-led secondaries from specialist territory into mainstream portfolio management. It is not simply reinvention for its own sake. It is the industry adapting to a world where the old exit rhythms no longer apply.

Evergreen funds and the myth of “semi-liquid”

Cyril explains the core tension: evergreen can be a sensible answer to the complexity of closed-end cash flows, but it can also become pro-cyclical if investor behaviour turns herding and redemption pressure rises at precisely the wrong moment.

This is why he dislikes the term “semi-liquid”. If everyone can gate at the same time, the promise of liquidity becomes more marketing than reality. The real test for evergreen products is not the steady-state environment, it is how they behave during stress, when the best opportunities often appear and the worst time to become a forced seller arrives.

Listed private equity vs unlisted evergreen: liquidity, volatility and correlation

Ross makes the case that listed private equity vehicles can offer much of the same exposure as evergreen funds, with the benefits of public-market liquidity. Cyril’s response is a useful portfolio construction lesson. Listed vehicles bring stock-market noise, particularly discounts to NAV, and they tend to correlate strongly with broader equity indices.

Unlisted evergreen products, by contrast, can behave more like an “anchor” through smoother NAV progression, which can matter to clients who value predictability and lower mark-to-market volatility. The key point is not that one structure wins universally, but that the right choice depends on what the investor is optimising for: liquidity, stability, diversification, or simplicity.

Private credit: filling a void, not creating a new systemic bomb

On private credit, Cyril takes a measured view that avoids both complacency and sensationalism. Stress exists, particularly as rates stay higher and liability management exercises rise, but that does not automatically translate into a hidden reservoir of catastrophe. He also notes the governance dynamic that often gets missed: direct lenders hold their loans and live with outcomes, which can impose a different kind of discipline.

The information problem: why private share trading is not a “plumbing” issue

In private markets, information is expensive to produce and due diligence is deep. Trying to mimic public market trading without public market disclosure is, in Cyril’s view, an unhealthy direction of travel.

What the industry still needs to fix: transparency in evergreen

If private wealth is going to be a sustainable relay of growth, evergreen products need better transparency and more usable granularity for due diligence. Closed-end structures have well-developed data room discipline. Evergreen, by contrast, can be harder to analyse precisely because the investor base is wider and information often becomes more controlled.

Will Dunham is President and CEO of the American Investment Council, the largest private equity and private credit trade association in the United States. Representing firms from trillion-dollar platforms to small and mid-market managers, he is the industry’s front-line advocate in Washington, charged with protecting private capital’s licence to operate and correcting the widening gap between online rhetoric and real-world impact.

We explore why private equity is more embedded in American life than most people realise, how political narratives have diverged from the data, and why Dunham believes long term private capital remains aligned with the interests of workers, savers and local communities.

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Main Street, not Wall Street: where private equity actually shows up

One of Dunham’s most powerful tools in Washington is a simple list: every private-equity-backed company in a policymaker’s district. The surprise is universal. Around 13 million Americans now work in companies backed by private capital, and 85 per cent of recent investment has gone into small and mid-sized firms with 500 employees or fewer.

These businesses don’t carry a sign saying “backed by private equity”. They are ice-cream brands scaling from a food truck to national distribution, manufacturing companies reshoring US production, and medical innovators developing new technologies. For Dunham, each investment is a long bet on the US economy. If workers and communities don’t succeed, neither do the firms backing them.

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Online narrative vs empirical reality

Google “private equity and housing” and you’ll find a flood of alarmist headlines. The numbers tell a different story. Private equity owns less than 1 per cent of US single-family homes, making the idea of “cornering the market” mathematically impossible. Instead, firms are increasing supply through build-to-rent communities and rent-to-own models that bridge families into good school districts while they save for deposits.

Healthcare follows a similar pattern. The headlines fixate on negative anecdotes, but private investment has funded 250+ urgent-care clinics, expanded rural access, and backed medical-device breakthroughs that would not have been financed easily in public markets. As Dunham puts it, the antidote to bad anecdotes is good data, and the research on access and quality is far more balanced than the headlines suggest.

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Private credit: grown-up capital, not systemic risk

Despite growing concern from commentators, Dunham sees private credit as the opposite of systemic. Funds are financed by equity, not short-term deposits, which avoids the classic mismatch that destabilises banks. The Federal Reserve has echoed this view. Demand is growing organically as businesses seek long-term, partnership-oriented capital at moments when they are not ready to sell.

Ross notes that the leverage-on-leverage narrative simply does not match how the asset class actually works. Dunham agrees: private credit is filling a financing gap, not creating a new fault line.

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The next frontier: opening 401(k)s to private markets

US public pension schemes have long invested in private equity and often cite it as their strongest performing allocation. Defined-contribution savers, however, have been locked out. Recent moves by the Trump administration instruct the Department of Labor to introduce clear guard rails so that professionally managed target-date funds can allocate to private markets.

The rationale is simple. Public markets have become highly concentrated, while the number of listed US companies has halved over 25 years. Doing nothing is not conservative; it increases concentration risk. Allowing diversified access to thousands of private companies may, in Dunham’s view, be the more prudent option for long term savers.

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Defending the licence to operate

Dunham resists the caricature of a powerful lobby machine. He describes the AIC as a translator between investors and policymakers, effective only because the underlying economic contribution is real. The biggest threats are not dramatic policy shocks but many small, incremental steps that make it harder to invest, grow companies and create jobs.

Private capital, he argues, is deeply embedded in America’s economic story: from reshoring manufacturing to national-security supply chains to more than 500 AI and data-centre investments in the past five years. The task now is to make that story visible.

As Dunham says, the licence to operate is earned one district, one company, and one conversation at a time.

David Nowak is President of Brookfield’s Private Equity Group. He leads Brookfield’s North American private equity business and its evergreen strategy, and brings a distinctly contrarian, operations-led perspective, shaped by more than a decade inside one of the industry’s most integrated investment platforms.

We explore how Brookfield identifies essential-service businesses that are misunderstood, how it deploys its information advantage across the broader Brookfield organisation, and why a dual-sponsorship model between investors and operators produces more repeatable value creation.

Contrarian by design: buying what others misread
Brookfield avoids thematic investing. Instead, the focus is on essential products and services where perceived risk diverges from actual risk. When everyone else is saying ‘climate change’ and renewables, they bet big on nuclear. When EVs make the combustion engine look uninvestable, they think outside the box.

One deal, two owners: the pilot / co-pilot model
Every investment has two equal sponsors: an investor and an operating leader. In underwriting, the investor is “pilot” and the operator “co-pilot”. In portfolio management, the roles reverse. Both remain on the file through exit, removing the typical tension between deal teams and operators. More than half of Brookfield’s private-equity returns come from operational improvement, not leverage.

Embedded asset and field agents
Brookfield’s operations team comprises c.35 senior operators who sit inside the private equity floor, not alongside it. And before rising to senior vice president, every investor is seconded into a portfolio company for a year, often in remote locations. The aim: develop judgement, understand day-to-day constraints, and replace spreadsheet assumptions with operational reality.

Our man in Alaska
Value creation comes from repeatable, grounded work: retooling supply chains, introducing dynamic pricing, tightening working-capital cycles, and reshaping organisational design. Brookfield’s teams seconde into companies, work shoulder-to-shoulder with management, and stay for the full journey from carve-out to maturity. The model is simple but demanding: pick the controllable levers, apply rigour daily, and compound small gains.

Culture: humility, apprenticeship, and earned responsibility
Brookfield’s open-plan layout is intentional: no offices, a flat structure, and constant exposure to how decisions are made. Young professionals are given responsibility early, but are expected to put in their 10,000 hours, learn from senior leaders, and keep politics far from their career ambitions. As David says: “You have one reputation. Spend it wisely.”

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Anthropologist and best-selling author Jack Weatherford, whose landmark book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World reshaped our understanding of history, joins Ross Butler to explore how the Mongol Empire fused creative destruction with long-term institution-building.

Far from being merely conquerors, the Mongols built one of the earliest global systems of commerce, meritocracy and capital allocation.

Jack explains how Genghis Khan dismantled corrupt elites, elevated artisans and merchants, and empowered women as investors through ortōq partnerships—private trading ventures that echo modern private equity. Ross describes Genghis Khan as the world’s most effective asset owner.

The discussion connects thirteenth-century portfolio thinking, religious tolerance, census and tax innovation, and technological transfer—from paper money to movable type—to the modern dynamics of private markets. What can investors learn from a society that turned warriors into shareholders and empire into enterprise?

This episode blends anthropology, finance and ethics to show why creative destruction only endures when creation wins.

🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹🔹

📘 Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
Company: Linear B Group

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Ross Butler speaks with Matteo Stefanel and Udayan Goyal, Co-Founders and Managing Partners of Apis Partners, one of the world’s best performing growth-capital firms.

How did two former investment bankers build a globally recognised growth platform, and what does their story reveal about where finance is heading?

Building a Firm Before the Market Was Ready

Drawing on two decades in M&A at DLJ and Deutsche Bank, Matteo and Udayan applied deal-making precision to private-equity investing: identify the future buyer first, then build the company to fit that strategic template.

“We call the likely acquirers before we buy—then we build to their menu.”

The Network as an Edge

Having taken firms like Visa, Mastercard, and First Data public, the Apis founders knew the global payments ecosystem inside out. Many of their mid-level contacts from those deals now lead the organisations that acquire Apis portfolio companies. That continuity of relationships—spanning two decades—has been central to their consistent exit performance.

Fintech’s Next Frontier

For Apis, the most disruptive phase of financial services is happening now. Stablecoins already move more volume than Visa and Mastercard combined, and corporate treasuries are beginning to adopt them for 24-hour liquidity management. Micropayments, decentralised finance, and agentic AI are together redrawing the boundaries between credit, payments, and savings.

Embedded Finance and Subscription-Everything

From iPhones to cars, ownership is giving way to access. Apple’s device-as-a-service model and Jaguar Land Rover’s mobility subscriptions illustrate how financial products are becoming invisible—embedded in experiences rather than sold separately. In this world, the profit pool shifts to those who own the customer relationship, not the balance sheet.

Democratising Wealth

Apis sees the same technological forces opening private-market access to ordinary savers. Platforms such as Moneybox show how digital distribution and AI-driven personalisation can make investing in private assets feasible at scale. The challenge, they note, is balancing precision with fairness—ensuring that hyper-personalised finance doesn’t exclude the less advantaged.

Finance at the Centre of Societal Change

From universal basic income to machine-to-machine banking, Matteo and Udayan argue that finance sits at the core of every major social and technological transformation. Far from being a “boring” sector, it is the mechanism through which the future economy will be built.

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Thank you to our episode partner 

Brookfield Private Equity: Global leader in acquiring and driving operational transformation in industrials and essential business services.

For more information, visit: www.brookfield.com/about-us/capabilities/private-equity

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If this episode resonated, share it with a colleague who cares about value-creation over slogans.

Ross Butler Founder and Host Fund Shack

🌐 CONNECT on Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/rossbutler1/

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About Fund Shack:
Fund Shack is a private equity podcast and global media channel for alternative investment professionals. Fund Shack is produced by Linear B Group.

Contact:
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Email: katie@linearb.media
Company: Linear B Group

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Ross Butler speaks with Adrian Letts, Managing Partner in Brookfield’s Private Equity Group and Head of Business Operations. Adrian brings a deep operator’s lens – from founding one of the UK’s first streaming platforms, to leading Tesco’s digital and global e-commerce, to scaling a UK retail-energy company from 500k to 5 million customers through M&A and transformation.

We explore how Brookfield’s “roll-up-your-sleeves” model aligns investors and operators from diligence to exit, and why organisation design, not checklists, is often the decisive value lever.

Alignment from day one: one team, one carry

Brookfield embeds operating leaders alongside investors with identical compensation structures, including carry. Operators sit in origination, diligence, capital reviews, value-creation planning, and exit. The result: no “second-class citizen” dynamic – just a single team accountable for outcomes.

Organisation before levers

Adrian’s first question is organisational: do we have the right people, accountabilities, spans and layers, cadence, and scorecards? With that foundation in place, Brookfield prioritises the three to five highest-return initiatives—rather than twenty half-started projects—so change sticks inside the company.

A small, senior, generalist ops bench

Brookfield’s core team is lean and high-impact—executive-chair types and transformation leaders who stay with a company from diligence through exit. Deep specialist work (e.g., pricing) is brought in from best-in-class partners when needed, keeping innovation high and avoiding a cookie-cutter playbook.

Digitisation & AI: accelerants to existing levers

AI isn’t a magic new lever—it speeds up pricing, procurement, working-capital, and commercial-ops work with greater certainty. A practical example from the portfolio: AI-driven demand and inventory models that correlate seasonality, weather, and vehicle mix to optimise production and free up working capital.

Pace with stability

Transformation moves at the speed the organisation can absorb. Brookfield maps current processes, designs the target model, and sequences change so performance improves without destabilising day-to-day operations—capability that endures after the consultants go home.

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If this episode resonated, share it with a colleague who cares about value-creation over slogans.

Ross Butler Founder and Host Fund Shack

🌐 www.fund-shack.com CONNECT on Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/rossbutler1/

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About Fund Shack:
Fund Shack is a private equity podcast and global media channel for alternative investment professionals. Fund Shack is produced by Linear B Group.

Contact:
Katie Mitchell
Email: katie@linearb.media
Company: Linear B Group

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In this episode of Fund Shack, Ross Butler speaks with William Benjamin, Head of Alternative Solutions at HSBC Asset Management, about the evolution of private markets, evergreen fund structures, and the democratization of alternatives.

William has held senior roles across HSBC’s alternatives platform — including CIO, CEO, and Head of Hedge Funds — as well as time at Goldman Sachs. With HSBC Alternatives now managing around $75 billion, he reflects on how private markets have shifted from niche strategies into a mainstream, essential part of diversified portfolios.

From private equity and credit to infrastructure and venture capital, Benjamin explains how HSBC leverages its global footprint to access opportunities across the spectrum. He argues that investors haven’t “missed the boat” on alternatives: with listed markets shrinking and private companies multiplying, alternatives remain a growing engine of value creation.

The conversation explores how HSBC partners with managers, balances mega-buyouts with mid-market opportunities, and applies strict allocation and risk management disciplines across client portfolios. Benjamin also shares views on evergreen fund design, the operational demands of democratizing access, and the cultural and career dynamics shaping talent in private markets.

Looking ahead, he anticipates continued, steady growth in alternatives, with private credit, infrastructure, and venture capital all playing expanding roles in the global investment universe.

This is a deep dive into how one of the world’s largest financial groups is positioning itself in alternatives, and why Benjamin believes the next phase of growth will be defined not just by institutions, but also by the rising participation of high-net-worth investors.

Ross Butler Founder and Host Fund Shack

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About Fund Shack:
Fund Shack is a private equity podcast and global media channel for alternative investment professionals. Fund Shack is produced by Linear B Group.

Contact:
Katie Mitchell
Email: katie@linearb.media
Company: Linear B Group

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Alex van Someren has lived at the frontier of technology entrepreneurship, venture capital, and national security. As a teenager he joined Acorn Computers, the company that seeded ARM Holdings and the UK’s early computing revolution. He co-founded nCipher, a London-listed cryptography firm, later became a partner at Amadeus Capital Partners, and between 2021 and 2024 served as the UK’s Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security. In this Fund Shack conversation, Alex shares deep insights into:

🔹The UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSIF) and its parallels with DARPA and US defence-linked venture capital.

🔹The cultural clash between government risk aversion and venture capital risk-taking.

🔹The future of dual-use technologies across AI, quantum computing, semiconductors, and space. 🔹The ESG debate around nuclear energy and small modular reactors.

🔹Why, despite all the hype, venture capital is still one of the hardest ways to make money. Alex’s perspective, as founder, investor, and government adviser, is a rare window into how capital, technology, and security policy interact in today’s geopolitical and financial environment.

Thank you to our episode partner Brookfield Private Equity: Global leader in acquiring and driving operational transformation in industrials and essential business services.

For more information, visit: www.brookfield.com/about-us/capabilities/private-equity

💼 Learn more at: Paladin Capital Group

🌐 www.paladincapgroup.com Alex van Someren www.paladincapgroup.com/people/alex-van-someren/

Ross Butler Founder and Host Fund Shack

🌐 www.fund-shack.com CONNECT on Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/rossbutler1/

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About Fund Shack:
Fund Shack is a private equity podcast and global media channel for alternative investment professionals. Fund Shack is produced by Linear B Group.

Contact:
Katie Mitchell
Email: katie@linearb.media
Company: Linear B Group

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Ross Butler speaks with Kim Pochon, Global Head of Primary Investments at Unigestion, and Joe Briggs, Founder of BCF for this launch episode of Fund Shack’s Emerging Manager Series.

What drives experienced professionals to leave established firms and launch new platforms? How do LPs assess the viability of emerging teams? And why the earliest decisions—on team structure, alignment, and strategy—can determine long-term success or failure.

Why “Emerging Manager” Is a Misnomer
Most “emerging managers” are highly experienced professionals. They are not new to investing, but new to firm-building. And while the term may not resonate with GPs themselves, it has real weight in the LP ecosystem, where it defines eligibility for dedicated programs and mandates.

Why LPs Value Early Access
Backing a first-time fund is not just about returns; it’s about relevance and franchise value. Early LPs often benefit from enhanced access, strong alignment, and deep relationships that persist long after the first fund closes. In many cases, Unigestion now co-invests or partners with these managers on continuation vehicles and secondaries—a long-term payoff for early conviction.

The Rise of Independent Sponsors and Hybrid Models
The deal-by-deal model—often called independent sponsorship—has flourished as a path to proof for aspiring GPs. Especially in Europe, emerging teams start with individual transactions, then evolve into structured vehicles. Joe Briggs highlights the growing hybrid space: mini-funds and “short-duration funds” that offer speed, alignment, and stepwise scalability before raising an institutional flagship.

Team Dynamics: The Make-or-Break Factor
The biggest risk in early-stage private equity isn’t deal flow—it’s the people. Joe and Kim stress that LPs are not just investing in a strategy, but a partnership. Decision-making processes, equity splits, and even how teams handle setbacks are all scrutinised.

Culture, Conviction, and the Push to Spin Out
So why do seasoned professionals walk away from high-paying roles? You’ll have to watch to find out…

Know Your Why
The most compelling emerging managers are those who can clearly articulate the value they bring—not just for themselves, but for LPs. As Briggs puts it, emerging GPs must “know why they deserve to exist.” That clarity, combined with operational discipline, is what separates scalable franchises from short-lived experiments.

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Contact Information:

About Fund Shack:
Fund Shack is a private equity podcast and global media channel for alternative investment professionals. Fund Shack is produced by Linear B Group.

Contact:
Katie Mitchell
Email: katie@linearb.media
Company: Linear B Group

Hashtags: #PrivateMarkets #PrivateEquity #PrivateCredit #Emergingmanagers

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Contact Information: About Fund Shack: Fund Shack is a private equity podcast and digital media channel for alternative investment professionals. Fund Shack is produced by Linear B Group Limited.