Private Markets Profile: Private Markets and Portfolio Construction – the decisive trends summit

Following private markets tailwinds: a shrinking public equity universe, rising buybacks and companies staying private for longer, institutional investors increased allocations to private markets.

Now, the AI boom is challenging some of those assumptions. Public markets are driving returns, but capital is concentrating in a handful of mega-cap companies. As the balance between public and private ownership evolves, investors are reassessing long-held allocation models.

Explore whether the structural case for private markets remains intact, how AI is reshaping capital markets and whether portfolios built for a de-equitising world need to be revisited.

How will AI-driven value creation reshape public and private markets? Is the long-term shift towards private ownership continuing, or beginning to reverse? Where will the next generation of opportunities emerge and where is capital becoming overcrowded?

The world needs more power. Electrification, AI, data centres, decarbonisation and energy security are driving an unprecedented wave of investment through generation, storage, transmission and grid infrastructure opportunities.

Explore where investors are finding value across the energy transition, whether specialist or diversified approaches offer the best risk-adjusted returns, and which parts of the market are most likely to attract capital over the next decades.

Where is genuine long-term LP demand and opportunity? Are digital infrastructure opportunities a structural asset class? Is the super-cycle already priced in and what happens to returns if it is?

Consider how investors should navigate this vast opportunity set and what combination of investments or exposure to the clean energy transition is likely to win the day.

With deglobalisation on the rise, trade and rising geopolitical tensions are reshaping global supply chains and capital flows. For private markets, this could drive significant investment in domestic manufacturing, logistics, energy security, defence and digital infrastructure but also bring higher costs, weaker productivity and slower growth.

Explore whether deglobalisation represents a genuine source of private-market opportunity or a structural headwind to returns. Which sectors and geographies stand to benefit, and which could suffer as global trade and cross-border investment weaken?

Can investors capture a premium for resilience, or will competition and higher valuations erode returns? And as fragmentation drives inflation, higher rates and potentially more difficult exits, does deglobalisation ultimately strengthen or weaken the institutional case for private markets?

Private markets have grown from an allocation to a core component of institutional portfolios. But the assumptions underpinning that growth are being tested: higher rates, slower distributions, persistent valuation gaps, increasing use of continuation vehicles and secondaries, and growing scrutiny of fees and liquidity.

The next phase may be less about whether institutions want private assets and more about whether private markets can continue to deliver the returns, diversification and illiquidity premium on which allocations were built.

Explore and examine whether private markets are entering a genuine structural reset: Are valuations sufficiently conservative? Has the growth of secondaries created real liquidity, or simply delayed price discovery? And can institutions continue to increase allocations without creating a portfolio-wide liquidity problem?