The New Private Markets Podcast

Financial performance is the key issue that will determine the viability of impact investing at scale in the long term. Given the relative youth of most impact funds, it is a topic still open to debate.

Asset manager Schroders has been examining the performance of its impact investments. The UK-headquartered firm released a study in collaboration with Oxford University’s Business School earlier this year which examined impact’s per...

When it comes to impact, private credit is often considered to be lagging behind other private markets asset classes. There are, however, signs that this is changing. Debt funds to hold a final close raised a combined $5 billion in 2024, the second-highest total of any asset class behind private equity.

Dutch institution APG Asset Management is one major LP to turn its attention to impact debt. The €616 billion fund recently moved ...

Learn more about the Impact Investor Global Summit in London here

Don't be put off by political noise. Reduced competition and growing demand for energy has made investment in US renewable energy generation easier and more attractive, says Natalie Adomait, managing partner and chief operating officer in Brookfield's renewable power and transition group.

Adomait is one of the speakers at the Impact Investor Global Summit on May 20th...

How do you create an impact strategy that passes muster with LPs? The question is on the agenda for both our upcoming Impact Investor Global Summit in London in May and for this special event preview episode of The New Private Markets Podcast.

Ben Constable Maxwell is head of impact strategy at UK-based global investor M&G Investments. The organisation sits on both sides of the LP-GP relationship, managing its own impact strate...

One of the many big unanswered questions in climate finance is how to channel capital to the Global South, where it is arguably needed the most.

The global impact investing market is now worth $1.57 trillion, according to the Global Impact Investing Network’s latest market sizing, though less than one-quarter of this reaches growth markets. Meanwhile, fast-growing populous nations in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa are set to...

Capricorn Investment Group is an unusual organisation. Born from the private wealth of billionaire and former eBay president Jeff Skoll, it now operates a number of different sustainability-oriented strategies from its bases in New York and Palo Alto, and acts as an outsourced chief investment officer for other foundations and endowments alongside the Skoll Foundation.

Among its strategies is the Sustainable Investors Fund, a progr...

The risks that climate change and biodiversity loss pose to portfolios have become more understood in recent years. However, inequality, as well as social risks and opportunities, remain difficult to understand and evaluate.

The Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures is seeking to address this. The initiative is developing a framework to facilitate more effective disclosures about impacts, dependencies, ri...

Thanks to initiatives such as Ownership Works, a growing number of private markets firms have begun to integrate employee ownership schemes. However, few firms have gone further in this regard than Apis & Heritage Capital Partners.

Founded in 2020, the firm finances the conversion of companies with substantial Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) workforces into 100 percent employee-owned businesses through its employe...

The transition to a low- or no-carbon economy requires more than just money. It requires a combination of skills and capital that has not traditionally existed in private markets.

This was the view taken by Charles Cherington and Troy Thacker, who in 2017 co-founded Ara Partners to take a "builder" approach to the decarbonisation of industry, with a particular focus on difficult-to-abate sectors. Eight years later, the firm has rai...

Singapore's Temasek is a large investor in both dollar terms and in terms of its influence in private markets. As of March 2024, it had S$389 billion ($291 billion; €278 billion) in assets under management and has become known for its focus on sustainability and climate investing. For around five years it has had a formalised approach to impact investing.

Leading that formal approach is Benoit Valentin, one of our 50 influencers in...

The concept of employee ownership in private equity – whereby all workers at a portfolio company benefit from a successful exit – has caught on. And it continues to gather pace.

One individual – KKR's co-head of private equity Pete Stavros – has arguably done more than anyone to build momentum behind this trend, through both KKR's portfolio and through Ownership Works, a non-profit he founded with his wife Lindsay.

Now Stavros has ...

Sustainability and ESG have faced – and continue to face – a political backlash.

At one end of the spectrum, the view of ESG is that it has gone too far; that it has become a vehicle for pushing woke ideologies without regard for the financial implications. At the other end, it represents access to better information, prudent investment risk management and value creation opportunities. So how does a modern private markets mega firm...

The New Private Markets Podcast focuses exclusively on sustainability issues in private equity, venture capital, private debt, real estate and infrastructure. Join the editorial team behind New Private Markets as they pick through the sustainability trends shaping these asset classes, from ESG to impact and beyond, with help from industry insiders.

To subscribe, search for The New Private Markets Podcast wherever you like to listen...