August 2025

So far this year, private markets have been defined by selectivity, scale and shifting global currents. Activity has been robust yet uneven, with several sizeable closes as managers navigate geopolitical tensions, volatile equity markets and evolving investor preferences.

Shifting investor preferences, capital raising challenges and building operational resilience have been key themes over the last year and will continue to impact fund managers in the year ahead. To stand out and attract capital in 2025, fund managers will need to be agile, responsive to investor demands and operationally robust.

2024 was a pivotal year for AIMA and the alternative investment industry. For several years, our industry has faced a wave of heightened regulatory obligations and risks mainly driven by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Many of these measures created unnecessary burdens for the industry and imposed unintended consequences on managers and allocators alike.

As the global shift in talent and capital flows defines the post-pandemic world, Dubai has emerged as the region's preferred location for alternative investment. Dubai has experienced a large influx of new entrants joining DIFC's expanding alternative investments ecosystem, which includes large and smaller multi-strategy hedge funds, investment management platforms, and various others from Asia, N…

For decades, family offices have been entrusted with preserving generational wealth. They are now transforming into prominent players in various investments and deals across a wide range of asset classes. This transformation is a result of increasing professionalisation and specialisation in their investment strategies and processes, and many evolving into full-fledged family investment funds.

A year ago I wrote a piece for this forum, "How to Run With the Crypto Bulls," as the crypto market was starting to build momentum and the path to potential positive returns was becoming clear. In the piece, I used the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, as an allegory to illustrate how to execute an investment in crypto from an experienced risk management perspective.

2024 has been an interesting year for the alternative investment space, with activity across the board. Family offices are significantly increasing their allocations to private markets and alternative investments, with nearly 52% of portfolios now allocated to areas like private equity, private credit, and infrastructure.

Private equity (PE) fundraising timelines hit a record 19 months in 2024, as fund managers prolonged closings to support investors dealing with liquidity issues from overallocation and weak distributions. This prolonged cycle pressures PE firms, especially mid-market and smaller managers with lean investor relations (IR) teams.

I recently saw a chart in the Financial Times which triggered a childhood memory. From a young age, I was interested in investing and my father encouraged this characteristic by acting as my broker come custodian for my desired transactions.

Private equity is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by evolving market demands and shifts. Hiring trends reflect these changes, particularly in the middle market, fundraising and private wealth channels, as well as in product development for the wealth management sector.

In a new report, Peregrine Communications and Boston Consulting Group consider what asset managers should be doing to tap into the growing retailization of private markets. This phenomenon, arguably the single most important secular trend in asset management, is creating incredible opportunities, both for investors and asset managers alike.

In 2025, real estate transaction activity is expected to gradually recover, driven by improved interest rate clarity and more realistic pricing expectations. Against this backdrop, German institutional investors are evolving their real estate strategies for a more global, diversified, and sustainability-conscious future.

In 2007, two former college roommates from Loyola University Chicago recognized the urgent need for a healthier and more regenerative food system. They sought a solution for both environmental challenges and the growing public health crisis arising from conventional, consolidated agricultural practices.

The UN's 2004 Who Cares Wins report is widely credited with bringing ESG into the mainstream, spreading the gospel that investors could make money while saving the planet. The idea that green investing and profitability went hand in hand took hold.

The Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) market has long been seen as a niche segment of the clean energy transition. However, it is gearing to become the next significant investment opportunity within environmental markets as RNG captures the attention of investors seeking exposure to sustainable real assets.

Renewable energy infrastructure is an attractive long-term investment proposition for allocators globally, perhaps even more so in this "drill baby drill" environment. Despite successes, most governmental and regional carbon reduction goals are far from met and the recent upheavals in the European energy landscape have meant that the argument on renewables has moved on from CO2 reduction to energy…

Before becoming a head-hunter 21yrs ago I had a brief period as a fund manager in the City, covering Emerging Market Debt and Currencies. My boss was an avid commodity investor and as Gordon Brown was selling off the UK's gold reserves, we, as contrarians, piled into junior gold stocks and bullion.

In the evolving world of commodities, data has become a critical driver of investment strategies. As markets grow more interconnected and volatile, alternative investors are increasingly relying on real-time, transparent, and data-driven pricing to make informed decisions.

In the last several years, individual investors have increasingly embraced semi-liquid evergreen funds to access private markets investments for their portfolios. These funds tend to offer some of the same benefits as drawdown funds - namely, diversification and attractive returns - but with lower investment minimums, periodic liquidity and more efficient tax reporting.

Over the past decade, democratisation of private assets or, retailisation, has been an important subject of discussion in the asset management industry. In mature markets such as the U.S., where there is a knowledgeable investor base used to manage their own assets on the financial markets, the BDCs have been a striking success.

Private markets, once the domain of institutional investors and 10-year closed-end commitments, have opened to a broader audience of private wealth. Key to this transformation has been the rise of semi-liquid evergreen fund structures - perpetual private market funds with periodic liquidity windows.

Retailization-the application of retail principles to industries beyond traditional retail-is reshaping global business models. The demand for seamless, intuitive, and highly personalized customer experiences is pushing companies in finance, healthcare, automotive, and real estate to rethink how they engage with their customers.

Over the past 25 years, the Cayman Islands have established themselves as a leading jurisdiction for alternative investment funds, with nearly 13,000 regulated open-ended funds and over 17,000 regulated closed-ended funds. As at the end of 2023, Cayman Islands registered investment funds had a combined net asset value of over US$8 trillion.

The Cayman Islands continues to be regarded as a benchmark among offshore fund jurisdictions, distinguished not only by the volume of funds but by its quality of governance, regulatory integrity and investor protections. The jurisdiction continues to lead standards in fund oversight, compliance and institutional quality services while remaining efficient and flexible.

The Cayman Islands is often cited as the leading jurisdiction for offshore private funds-but what do the numbers say? According to the latest report from the SEC's Division of Investment Management Analytics Office, as of Q3 2024, a remarkable 31.7% of the net assets of all private funds globally are held in Cayman Islands-domiciled vehicles.

Private markets are entering a new era, marked by a decisive shift away from traditional blind-pool investing toward more agile, transparent, and collaborative models. At the center of this evolution is the rise of direct investing and co-investment structures, and increasingly, the jurisdiction making it all possible is the Cayman Islands.

As investors expand their search for alpha and seek returns in less liquid strategies - like private equity, private credit, venture capital, and real estate - closed-ended investment funds are increasingly popular. Alongside this shift, regulators and investors alike are demanding enhanced fund governance, pushing for higher standards across all fund structures.

If you could go back to Wall Street in the 1980s, with today's data science toolkit, you would have a good chance of crushing the markets. Back then, the "quirks" present in equity and commodity markets gave rise to the first generation of quant traders who, with primitive data and basic models, extracted extraordinary returns from strategies like simple trend-following.

Bitcoin has recently surged to a new all-time high above $111,000. That headline alone speaks volumes: Crypto is no longer on the fringe - it's now part of the normal financial discourse amongst asset managers and the media.

Over the past five years, I've met hundreds of crypto hedge fund managers. The talent is real. What's missing is the infrastructure to support it. Until that changes, most of the industry will remain subscale - and structurally off-limits to institutional capital.

Bitcoin is moving up, regulatory obstacles appear to be moving down, but the experience of digital asset investing can still be disorientating. For those who have dreamed of being an astronaut, the term for when a spacecraft is spinning in all directions, and a pilot needs to reorientate the ship, is called Attitude Control.

In investing, some windows only open once. By the time a transformational technology reaches public consensus, the asymmetry is gone. The early internet, mobile communications, and cloud computing all passed through periods of underestimation.

As digital assets mature, a new frontier of opportunity has emerged in decentralized finance (DeFi), where sophisticated players are able to capture outsized returns. Alpha is now greatest in DeFi markets, with many new token assets launching and trading billions in volume onchain before ever being listed in Centralized Finance (CeFi).

The digital assets market has seen unprecedented growth, particularly in the last 18 months and a recent report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Ripple doesn't see this slowing down. They predict tokenised real-world assets (RWA) will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 53% from 2025 to 2033, reaching $18.9 trillion from $600 billion today.

The Private Credit market has grown rapidly over the last decade and in an increasingly competitive landscape, a direct lender is only as good at the deals they originate. Origination is often the GP's biggest cost of deployment, but a fund manager ignores it at their peril as a weak origination strategy can force them into unfavourable lending scenarios.

Evergreen funds are in vogue in the private credit space but what is the attraction, what do they look like and what are the key challenges? Adopting an evergreen structure can be mutually beneficial to managers and investors.

Market practitioners love to quote a phrase attributed to Mark Twain, that "history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes". When it comes to the development of new asset classes, financial history tells us that they evolve in a similar manner.

Private credit has transformed from a niche strategy into a core institutional and private investor allocation. Preqin forecasts global private debt AUM at $2.64 trillion by 2029, nearly doubling from 2023. Direct lending alone is expected to account for two-thirds of that growth.