DETAILED OUTLINE
8.30am
REGISTRATION OPEN
Club Pavilion, RACV City Club Melbourne
9.00am
WELCOME
Tim Townsend
Partner & Private Wealth Adviser, Townsend Cobain Partners
James Weir
Director & Private Wealth Adviser, Steward Wealth
9.15am
THE STATE OF PLAY
Global Private Markets: Where We Are in the Cycle, and What Comes Next
Private markets have grown faster over the past decade than almost anyone forecast, and the composition of that growth has shifted. Capital that once came almost entirely from institutions is now increasingly arriving from private wealth, with evergreen and semi-liquid structures becoming a standard feature of portfolios.
Taking a broader snapshot of how private markets are faring, this opening session will look at where capital is flowing across private equity, credit and real assets, what the numbers actually say about returns delivered versus returns promised, and where the current cycle sits relative to history. Most importantly, our speakers will consider what all of this means for capital committed today — what future returns we should reasonably expect given current valuations and the drivers likely to shape them.
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Key Issues:
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Where We Are in the Cycle – Fundraising, dry powder, deal activity and pricing across private markets, and what history suggests about the entry point.
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The Democratisation of Access – Evergreen structures and the flow of private wealth into private markets: how much new capital is arriving, and what it does to the market it enters.
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Returns & Dispersion – What private markets have actually delivered against public alternatives, and how wide the gap between managers has become.
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The Outlook for New Capital – What a commitment made today should realistically return, and the credible risks to that view.
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WORKSHOP EXCHANGE - Workshop Discussion
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Your Allocation Today: At a high level, what is your current exposure to private market assets, and where is that exposure likely to move over the next three to five years?
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Adviser Advantage: How do you think the opportunity set differs between the large super fund investors and advice groups — and where can advisers build a competitive advantage?
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What's Holding You Back: What are the current challenges or concerns you need to overcome before increasing your private markets allocation?
10.05am
MORNING TEA
10.25am
THE OTHER PRIVATE CREDIT
Asset-Backed and Specialty Lending: Where Risk and Return Actually Come From
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Most private credit exposure in Australian client portfolios today is one of two things: commercial real estate lending, or corporate direct lending. While these sectors are reasonably well understood, the market is quickly evolving beyond this, with segments such as asset-backed and specialty lending building niches often in areas the banks have stepped back from.
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This session will explore the fundamentals driving this evolution – examining how these loans are originated and structured, where the return genuinely comes from, and how to assess whether the premium on offer provides genuine compensation for complexity and illiquidity.
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Key Issues:
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Beyond Property and Corporates – What asset-backed and specialty lending is, how it differs from the direct lending most portfolios already hold, and where banks have retreated.
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Where the Return Comes From – Origination, structuring, servicing and scale as return drivers, and why the yield is not simply a function of taking more credit risk.
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Where the Risk Actually Sits – Beyond borrower credit: collateral valuation, dependency on the servicer, correlation across a granular book, and leverage within the structure itself.
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When Things Go Wrong – Monitoring, arrears, workout and recovery, and how loss scenarios are planned for at portfolio construction.
THOUGHT LEADERS:
Guy Kaufman
Managing Director, Head of Investments
MA Financial Group
IDEA EXCHANGE - Workshop Discussion
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Look Through Your Book: How much of your existing private credit exposure is driven by property or corporate lending – and does it diversify as much as you assumed?
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Due Diligence: What two or three questions most reliably separate a strong private credit manager from a weak one?
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Portfolio Role: Is asset-backed and specialty lending a defensive income allocation, a growth-adjacent one, or something else?
11.25am
BUYING SECOND-HAND
The Secondaries Market: Why It Exists, How Deals Get Done, and Whether Now Is the Time to Buy
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Secondaries have gone from a discreet corner of the market to an established part of the private equity ecosystem, with institutional investors increasingly able to rely on this growing segment to rebalance their private markets exposure – at a price!
This session looks at how the market works and where it currently sits. Our speaker will unpack how secondaries evolved and the structural need they serve, walk through what a transaction actually looks like — who sits on each side, how a portfolio of interests gets priced, and how LP-led and GP-led deals differ — and examine current conditions: transaction volumes, the capital available to buy, and whether sellers today are under pressure or acting opportunistically.​
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Key Issues:
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Why the Market Has Grown – The structural and cyclical forces driving secondary volume.
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Anatomy of a Transaction –What a deal looks like in practice: LP-led sales and GP-led continuation vehicles, who sits on each side, and how a portfolio gets priced.
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Timing the Market – If the case for secondaries rests partly on today's supply-demand balance, is this a permanent allocation or a tactical one — and is now the time to be overweight?
THOUGHT LEADERS:
John Lee
Partner
Lexington Partners (Representing Franklin Templeton)
IDEA EXCHANGE - Workshop Discussion
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Entry Point: Are secondaries a substitute for primary private equity exposure, a complement, or a way to start an allocation?
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Pricing Discipline: How do you assess whether a secondaries manager is buying well, given you cannot see the underlying assets?
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Timing the Market: If the case for secondaries rests partly on today's supply-demand balance, is this a permanent allocation or a tactical one — and is now the time to be overweight?
12.20pm
LUNCH
1.25pm
GLOBAL BY DESIGN
Building a Private Credit Allocation Beyond Australian Shores
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Australian advisers have had ready access to domestic private debt for some years. Global private credit is a different proposition — a far larger and deeper opportunity set, but one raising questions about access, structure and how to assess managers operating in markets advisers cannot easily see.
Institutional investors have been allocating to global private credit for well over a decade. This session brings both perspectives together: where the opportunity currently sits across geographies and segments, who the capital is actually being lent to and on what terms, and how a large institutional allocator sizes, structures and monitors a private credit book. We'll then turn to what the adviser market can reasonably borrow from institutional practice — and where adviser portfolios hold advantages that institutions do not.
Key Issues:
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The Global Opportunity Set – Which geographies and segments look most attractive, and where spreads and structures have moved.
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The Institutional Lens – How large allocators size a private credit allocation, and what they monitor once invested.
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What Advisers Can Borrow – and Where They Differ – Which institutional practices translate to a client portfolio, and where adviser portfolios hold advantages institutions do not: smaller cheques, no peer benchmark, no obligation to deploy at scale.
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Who You're Lending To – Borrower quality, covenant protection and competition among lenders across the major markets.
THOUGHT LEADER:
Nehemiah Richardson
CEO
Pengana Credit
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IDEA EXCHANGE - Workshop Discussion
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The Cycle Question: Global private credit has grown enormously without a full default cycle behind it. Does that change how you'd size the allocation?
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Domestic vs Global: How do you split a private credit allocation between Australian and global exposure, and what drives that split?
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Trusting What You Can't See: What actually gives you confidence in a global private credit manager — track record, ratings, the research house, or something else?
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2.30pm
POWERING THE DECADE
Private Infrastructure and the Constraints on the Digital Build-Out
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Infrastructure has moved from a quiet, income-oriented corner of the portfolio to the centre of the largest capital deployment story in a generation. The energy transition and the digital build-out together require capital at a scale public markets alone will not supply, and private infrastructure has become the primary vehicle for it.
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The interesting question is no longer whether the demand is real. It is whether the pipeline can physically be delivered. Power availability, grid connection queues, land, water, supply chains and skilled labour are binding constraints in every major market, and they are increasingly what determines which announced projects become operating assets. This session takes a global view: where capital is actually flowing, how returns are generated across the spectrum from core to value-add, what separates a announcement from an asset, and whether the strength of the demand narrative is already reflected in what investors are paying.
Key Issues:
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Where the Capital Is Going – Energy transition and digital infrastructure across major global markets, and the assets underpinning both.
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The Delivery Constraint – Power, grid connection, land and supply chains: what separates an announced project from an operating asset.
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Core to Value-Add – How risk and return differ across the infrastructure spectrum, and which end suits which client.
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Valuation & Crowding – Whether strong demand for infrastructure assets is compressing forward returns.
THOUGHT LEADERS:
Chloe Berry
Managing Partner, Infrastructure
Brookfield
IDEA EXCHANGE - Workshop Discussion
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Picks and Shovels: Exposure to the AI theme mostly sits in a handful of listed equities. What role, if any, can private infrastructure play in broadening it?
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Build or Buy: How comfortable are you with managers taking construction and development risk rather than buying operating assets — return enhancer or source of additional risk?
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Portfolio Role: Does infrastructure sit in your defensive bucket, your growth bucket, or its own alternatives allocation — and does that framing hold up?
3.25pm
AFTERNOON TEA
3.45pm
FROM ALLOCATION TO IMPLEMENTATION
Sizing, Structuring and Managing a Private Markets Allocation
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Implementation is where private markets allocations succeed or fail. Advisers face a materially wider menu than they did three years ago — evergreen and closed-end structures, listed and unlisted vehicles, on-platform and off-platform access — alongside unresolved questions of sizing, liquidity budgeting, suitability and documentation.
Our sessions today have each grappled with the same portfolio construction challenges, from selecting appropriate investment structures to managing liquidity and total fee load. This closing session aims to build on these discussions and establish practical takeaways. Investment platforms are well established in facilitating public markets access — increasingly the gap will be closed in private markets, carrying implications for what's possible in our model portfolios and the sophistication of blending public and private market investments for clients.
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Key Issues:
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Sizing & Sequencing – How much is appropriate, how to phase commitments across managers and vintages, and what model portfolio structures allow as platform capability improves.
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Access & Structure – What is available and through which vehicles: evergreen, closed-end and blended, on-platform and off, and the trade-offs each carries.
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Liquidity Budgeting – Constructing an allocation that holds when client circumstances change.
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Blending Public and Private – How private allocations sit alongside listed exposure in a model portfolio, and what the combination changes about risk, correlation and rebalancing.
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IDEA EXCHANGE - Workshop Discussion
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The Platform Question: Where does your platform help and where does it get in the way? What have you wanted to use but couldn't access?
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When a Client Needs Out: What's your plan when a client needs liquidity from an illiquid allocation sooner than expected — and has that plan been tested?
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Monday Morning: What is the single change you will make to your private markets approach as a result of today?