The New Private Markets Podcast

Why Altérra's CEO is 'very, very confident' about its $250bn mobilisation goal

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, Southeast Asia and Africa are set to account for an expanding proportion of global energy needs and emissions – unless the energy transition is a genuinely global endeavour.

Altérra is one of – if not the – most influential investors addressing this question. The $30 billion allocation was created by the United Arab Emirates and unveiled at COP28 in late 2023. Its impact was immediate, committing $6 billion at the outset to funds managed by TPG, Brookfield Asset Management and BlackRock. Some of the capital went to those firms' existing climate-focused strategies and some went to seed new emerging markets-focused strategies.

Over a year later, we caught up with His Excellency Majid Al Suwaidi, the CEO of Altérra and former senior diplomat, to find out what progress has been made, how the world has changed since COP28 and what is next for the giant climate fund.

Capricorn's bet on Closed Loop and the circular economy

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 Sustainable Investors Fund, a programme which seeks to add scale to the sustainable investment universe through GP stakes investment. In February, the strategy backed Closed Loop Partners, a leading firm in the field of circular economy investing (and also a winner in the latest New Private Markets Global Awards).

In this episode of The New Private Markets Podcast, recorded at PEI Group's NEXUS 2025 event in Orlando, we speak to Marie-Céline Damnon, investment director at Capricorn Investment Group, to discuss the strategy, the Closed Loop Partners deal and the landscape for investing in sustainable asset managers at a time when the concept of sustainability – in the US anyway – is not flavour of the month.

Inequality as a systemic risk

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 disclosures about impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities related to inequality.

In this episode, New Private Markets senior reporter Charles Avery speaks to Delilah Rothenberg, co-founder of the non-profit Predistribution Initiative and a member of the TISFD steering committee. They discuss the latest on the TISFD and how investors can start to understand and address the risks that rising inequality poses to their portfolios.

Making employee ownership the core of an investment strategy

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-owned businesses through its employee-led buyout strategy. The firm closed its first fund in 2022.

In this episode, senior reporter Charles Avery connects with Philip Reeves, who co-founded the firm alongside Todd Leverette, to understand how such a strategy works in practice and how it delivers positive impact and returns for investors.

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Building a private markets firm for the 'missing middle'

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. Eight years later, the firm has raised three generations of its flagship private equity fund, and is raising an infrastructure strategy. In doing so it has helped define the emerging category of decarbonisation-focused private markets investors.

"You hear a lot in this world about the missing middle; that's right where we sit; And you know, we're a drop in the bucket," says Cherington in this episode.

"We are taking the hand-off from venture, we are taking proven technologies in companies that need to be industrialised, building the first handful of plants, and when we are done, we'll be handing those companies off to public markets, large strategics or mega-cap private equity."

Join us as we talk to Cherington about the rapid growth of the firm, and what he wishes he had known eight years ago.

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Temasek’s journey into impact investing and beyond

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 Valentin, one of our 50 influencers in sustainable private markets. Valentin is Temasek's head of private equity fund investments, head of partnership solutions, deputy head of EMEA and head of impact investing.

In this episode, Valentin explains the three principles to Temasek's approach, the challenges encountered since launching the programme and the qualities the investor looks for in a GP.

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Lessons on employee ownership with KKR's Pete Stavros

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 with his wife Lindsay.

Now Stavros has taken on an additional mission: to encourage greater use of ESOPS – employee stock ownership programmes – in corporate America.  

In this episode, senior editor for ESG and sustainability Toby Mitchenall connects with Stavros to take stock of how the employee ownership revolution was progressing, and find out what is needed to advance the mission and create wealth for working families.

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Navigating the sustainability 'hype cycle' with Carlyle's Megan Starr

Sustainability and ESG have faced – and continue to face – a political backlash.

At one end of the spectrum, the view of ESG is that it has gone too far; that it has become a vehicle for pushing woke ideologies without regard for the financial implications. At the other end, it represents access to better information, prudent investment risk management and value creation opportunities. So how does a modern private markets mega firm position itself to cater to potentially diverging opinions among its stakeholders?

To help us navigate what she describes as sustainability's "hype cycle", we speak to Megan Starr, global head at corporate affairs at the listed private markets firm Carlyle, in this inaugural episode of The New Private Markets Podcast.

Starr was one of the professionals we named among our 50 influencers in private markets sustainabtility, in part because of the role she played in founding the EDCI (ESG Data Convergence Initiative). The EDCI has been a dramatic step forward in terms of standardised reporting of sustainability data; it is now approaching nearly 500 GP and LP members and is starting to produce time series ESG performance data from private equity porfolio companies. We discuss whether data like this could cut through the political rhetoric around ESG.

See the 50 influencers in sustainable private markets here.

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