The New Private Markets Podcast

Since its launch in 2023 Altérra has established itself as one of the world's most influential investors in sustainable private markets. It has established fund relationships with Brookfield , BlackRock , TPG , KKR and CIP , and a direct co-investment programme that spans infrastructure and private equity. It has partnered with Spanish bank BBVA and is on the lookout for additional, complementary...

With all the discussion about promising VC-backed climate technology facing a "valley of death", what is actually needed to take these companies to scale? Building plants requires a lot of equity, a bit of senior debt, "but ultimately you need many more layers of the cap table", says Temple Fennell, co-founder and managing partner of Clean Energy Ventures. "You need insurance, you need wrappers of...

When it comes to decarbonisation, investors have been spreading their capital too thinly across companies and technologies, says Stan Miranda, founder of the True North Institute and co-founder of All Aboard. "We will not make the right investments if we don't face the reality of what's happening at the atmospheric level," says Miranda, "And for some reason or other investors in this space tend to...

The European Investment Fund is one of the most important allocators to the continent's climate funds. More than half of the €6.3 billion it invested in sustainability and green transformation last year was deployed into private markets, according to its 2025 annual report. It was the second-most frequent allocator to impact funds in 2025 and Q1 2026, New Private Markets analysis shows. In this ep...

In February, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan , a Canadian pension plan with C$270 billion ($197 billion; €167 billion) in assets, unveiled a revised climate strategy , with new targets and new ways to measure progress. In this episode, Anna Murray, senior managing director and global head of sustainable investing, takes us behind the changes, explaining why the pension has moved away from emissions...

APG Asset Management is one of the world's most influential investors in private markets, and a leader in the integration of sustainability and impact into its investment approach. It manages around €590 billion on behalf of Dutch public pension funds and has an ambitious €30 billion target for impact investments. In this discussion with Patrick Kanters, APG's chief investment officer, private mar...

For years, ESG was viewed more as an exercise in disclosure than a means to value creation. But sustainability is increasingly going beyond ticking boxes. It is becoming an increasingly important method for unlocking value in private equity portfolios. Ahead of the Responsible Investment Forum: New York on 18-19 March, The New Private Markets Podcast discussed sustainability and value creation in...

Impact investing reached an inflection point in 2025 as uncertainty gripped private markets, abetted by political turbulence, fundraising difficulties and liquidity constraints. But such uncertainty may have been necessary for impact fund managers to focus on a sharper articulation of market fundamentals, according to Rekha Unnithan, global head of private equity impact investing at Nuveen , the a...

How does a distribution drought affect LPs and how should they react? In this episode, we speak to Tom Mitchell, partner in the foundation and endowments practice and head of sustainable and impact solutions at Cambridge Associates . Cambridge Associates has been advising institutions on their investments since 1973. Mitchell has been with the firm since 2007 and helped launch its sustainable and...

Regenerative economic models create value and expand markets, rather than undermine them, says Kat Taylor. Taylor is an investor and philanthropist, and alongside her husband Tom Steyer founded TomKat Foundation. She is also the co-founder of the Beneficial State Bank and co-founder of the TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation. Taylor was also one of the speakers at the New Private Markets Investor...

Having shot to prominence in the early part of this decade, have sustainability-linked loans (or SLLs) become an enduring part of the private credit landscape? Or have they quietly gone out of fashion? In this special edition of the podcast, co-hosted with PEI Group affiliate publication Private Debt Investor, we seek to chart the rise of sustainability-linked loans and assess how they are being u...

Two major talking points at this year's New Private Markets Investor Summit: North America were the transformative force of AI and the pressing need for liquidity in private markets portfolios. While neither of these topics are unique to impact or sustainable investing, they are of paramount importance and dominated discussions on stage and off. In this episode, Jennifer Kenning, founder and CEO o...

When Kenza Himmi, the head of impact investing and partnerships at the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund, attends a pitch meeting with a fund manager, she keeps an ear out for a few non-negotiable items. She wants to know the fund's intent and whether it is designed to direct capital to environmental and social solutions. She wants to know how the fund measures the impact of its investments....

Is the field of impact investing growing in a healthy way, or is it being co-opted by firms for whom positive impact is secondary to asset gathering? In this episode of The New Private Markets Podcast , we explore this fundamental question with Jed Emerson, a true veteran of the impact field, an author of multiple books and papers on the topic, and until April of this year, the chief impact office...

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 th...

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. Th...

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...

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 relation...

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, S...

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...

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 disclosu...

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-...

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....

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 Val...

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 wit...