Main conference day two
Hyperscaler demand is accelerating while power infrastructure is struggling to keep pace. The data centre market is moving faster than the underwriting frameworks designed to assess it. For investors, digital infrastructure offers attractive long-duration cashflows – but also a set of risks that are priced and structured in real time: technology obsolescence, energy cost exposure, single-tenant concentration, and the question of what happens when hyperscaler demand cycles turn. How is documentation evolving and where are the boundaries of investable digital infrastructure?
Europe faces an infrastructure investment gap estimated at hundreds of billions of euros annually. Between energy networks, water systems, transport, and social infrastructure, governments alone cannot close it and the private market is increasingly stepping in alongside public financing programmes.
- Within the infrastructure landscape, where is private capital flowing?
- Which subsectors are attracting the most interest, and what structures are used to bridge the public-private gap?
- How are investors approaching the long-dated and regulated-asset risk profiles that characterise the most attractive European infrastructure credits?
The return of US tariff policy, the fracturing of global trade relationships, and Europe’s fiscal response to a more fragmented world are reshaping the environment in which private capital is deployed. For some participants, European political and economic stability makes it a more attractive destination for long-duration debt in an uncertain world. For others, this same exposure to European corporates creates new credit risks that need to be priced carefully. What should participants be watching for in the months ahead?
Investors are increasingly looking at sports franchises, media rights, stadium infrastructure, and club debt as private placement and private credit opportunities. With a dynamic range of return including long-dated infrastructure debt backed by stadium cashflows, and private placement notes backed by broadcasting revenues the market is looking increasingly attractive.
- How are investors approaching this market?
- How is reputational risk, governance complexity, and the volatility of sporting performance managed financially?
- What is the issuer perspective?
- Are sports a genuine long-duration asset class, or a trophy investment dressed up as credit?
- Jean Wauters - Senior Director, New York Life Investors
With the continent providing a green light for nuclear alongside renewables, how are investors building exposure across the full clean energy spectrum? Nuclear is back on the agenda: France doubles down on new build, the UK’s Great British Energy – Nuclear programme is advancing, and modular reactors are moving from concept to investible asset class. As power demand surges, primarily via data centres and electrification, does Europe finally have the political will to match its clean energy ambition with the capital it needs?
Transportation infrastructure has long been a cornerstone of the private placement market. It offers predictable cashflows, essential service characteristics, and long asset lives that naturally align with insurance investor liabilities. However, as the sector faces increase demand and trade route constraints, where does the best risk-adjusted value lie in European transportation infrastructure and what do the deals look like moving forward?
- Marjan Riggi - Managing Partner, Stage Wing Advisory
Music royalties, pharmaceutical licensing streams, franchise fees, and intellectual property cashflows are finding their way into private investment portfolios as investors search for yield in assets that don’t look like traditional corporate credit but behave like it when structured correctly. Royalty portfolios offer long-duration predictable cashflows, but they also require investors to build entirely new analytical frameworks around longevity, valuation, and the legal scope.
- How mature is the market for IP-backed private investments in Europe?
- Who are the issuers?
- How does intangible collateral look like from an underwriting perspective?
Asset-backed finance has become one of the most consequential growth areas in the European private market. Where investors once focused almost exclusively on corporate credit, a new generation of ABF transactions is arriving in volume. But scaling ABF in the private placement context requires the market to solve structural problems. As covenant packages thin and the universe of asset types broaden, investors are having to build new analytical frameworks in asset classes they have not historically owned.
- Where is the opportunity in European ABF?
- How are documentation tensions being resolved in practice?
- What should a disciplined and scalable market look like?
CLO issuance is on course for a record year, debut managers are pricing their first transactions, and deal sizes are growing beyond long-established benchmarks. But the benign conditions that have driven this growth are also creating complacency and feeding into CLO portfolios in ways that are not always visible at the surface.
- How are managers and investors stress-testing collateral quality?
- How are they managing reinvestment risk?
- Where does the next credit cycle come into play in a market that has only ever operated in relatively benign conditions?
- How does it complement other investment strategies?
Fund finance has evolved from a simple liquidity management tool into a sophisticated and fast-growing corner of private markets. NAV lending is becoming mainstream and subscription line facilities are growing.
- How are investors underwriting fund-level leverage while assessing NAV volatility?
- What is required for managing the structural subordination that comes with lending against a portfolio rather than a single credit?
- Are documentation standards keeping pace with the complexity of what is actually being financed?