Main conference day one
As rates stabilise and European fiscal expansion accelerates, a new cycle is beginning and the dynamics look different. Kicking off with a rapid-fire cross industry panel, hear from investors, issuers, and agents on a frank, unvarnished look at where the market stands today, what’s working, what’s under pressure, and the next phase of growth.
- Alexander Prokopenko - Senior Manager, Business Development and Operations, Egan Jones
Issuance data tells a story about where private placement capital is flowing. By examining deal size distribution, geographic mix, sector breakdown, trends, and IG v non-IG split, what is the state of play in the industry? What does the forward pipeline tell us about Q4 and where should participants be positioning themselves for the year ahead?
- Robert Busby - Managing Director and Head of Private Placements, NatWest
Spreads have tightened, the competition for high-quality assets is fierce, and investors are having to work harder to find relative value in a market that has attracted significant new capital. As the universe of eligible assets expands, opportunity is created as complexity rises.
- How are investors recalibrating allocations?
- What sectors and structures are attracting this capital, and which are being avoided?
- How do global and regional investors differ in their approach to the same assets?
- How are private placements integrating into the wider private credit market and how is IG merging the two fields?
- Jörg Goschin - Chief Executive Officer, KfW Capital
Between mid-sized German industrial, Iberian utilities, Eastern European infrastructure operations, and even sports organisations, the European corporate issuer base is broadening. For new entrants, the process is not always straightforward, particularly for issuers balancing cross border standards, credit rating processes, and investor expectations.
- What key insights does a first-time or returning European issuer need to know?
- How are issuers thinking about private markets as a core financing tool?
- What improvements make companies more attractive to investors?
- Felix Fletcher - Director of Corporate Finance & Treasury, SGN
More first-time European issuers are coming to the market than ever before while US investors are deepening their European ties.
- In this environment, how are agents differentiating themselves?
- How are agents balancing the demands of issuers who want speed and certainty with investors who want discipline and documentation?
- Where is deal flow coming from and where is capital going?
- What role do cross border deals play in shaping trends?
- Where does private credit play a role?
As the lines between IG private placements, private credit, and infrastructure debt continue to blur asset managers are having to build more sophisticated allocation frameworks to navigate overlap.
- As institutional capital continues to flow into private markets at scale, how are the leading managers thinking about private placements within a broader alternatives portfolio?
- Where are they finding the most compelling risk-adjusted returns?
- What are they avoiding and how are they managing the tension between illiquidity premium and growing investor demand for liquidity?
- How are strategic and portfolio construction decisions shaping where private placement capital goes?
- Stuart Hitchcock - Global Head of Portfolio Management, Private Credit, L&G Asset Management
- Ewan Macaulay - Head of Private Placements, Royal London Asset Management
As the market has scaled, private credit’s boundaries have blurred and nowhere is that more visible than at the intersection with investment grade private placements. Between all the various investment vehicles, this creates genuine choice, but also complexity. For investors, it creates opportunity — but also the risk of mandate drift and mispriced credit.
- How is each instrument positioned?
- Where does the genuine differentiation lie and how do pricing and documentation standards compare across the spectrum?
- What does the convergence of private credit and IG private placements mean for the long-term structure of the market?
Between ELTIF 2.0, Basel IV implementation, the evolving Solvency II treatment of private assets, and the EU’s new AML package, where is the divergence between European, US, and global documentation standards and covenants? What do these changes mean for private placement participants in practice? Is Europe finally building the regulatory infrastructure to develop a deep, liquid, and domestic private placement market on its own terms?
- James Hopegood - Director, Asset Management Regulation, AIMA
As the traditional boundaries of the private placement market are under pressure from both sides, private credit investors are increasingly participating in transactions that would historically have been the exclusive domain of IG private placement investors. At the same time, these investors are considering structures and credits that push the edges of their mandates.
- How is this convergence changing deal dynamics, documentation standards, covenant packages, and pricing?
- Is the blurring of boundaries a sign of a maturing market, or does it create risks that participants are not yet pricing correctly?
- John Tsui - Managing Principal, Peninsula House
An interactive discussion that draws on the experiences of experts in the field and real-life case studies from multiple perspectives.
More information to follow