The rate question has flipped again: after last year's cuts, the Fed has begun hiking, inflation is proving sticky as energy prices climb, and long-term borrowing costs sit at multi-decade highs while government debt keeps setting records. Cailin Birch, Global Economist at The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), returns to open the conference with the EIU's read on the year ahead: whether higher-for-longer rates spread from the US to other major economies and what that means for the dollar, where growth is holding up across the US, Europe, Asia, and the Gulf, how a volatile geopolitical map is repricing energy and infrastructure, and how the AI investment supercycle is competing with governments for capital. She will cover these and other forces reshaping global allocation. The session closes on the question underneath the whole agenda: what this environment means for how, and where, capital flows into private markets.

Every market answers the liquidity question differently: the US interval fund treats constraints as investor protection, Europe's semi-liquid wave builds liquidity into the product itself, and Australia's superannuation system has thrived while barely offering daily liquidity at all. Each answer reflects a real judgment about what serves investors, and this panel puts those judgments side by side. It also takes on the past year's stress test directly: pressure in private credit met evergreen structures for the first time in this boom, US products reported rising redemptions in their public filings while most international products publish no comparable figures, and the same strain read as turmoil in one market and near-silence in the other. What is the honest liquidity promise for genuinely illiquid assets — and which designs actually protect investors when it matters?

A full Washington hour in two parts, read for an international audience.

Chris Brown and Kendra Isaacson of Mindset, a premier Washington, DC lobbying firm, read the American political landscape after the 2026 midterm elections. They focus on what reaches beyond U.S. borders: trade and tax policy, regulatory posture toward non-U.S. managers and capital, and how Washington's direction shapes global allocation.

Then Kevin Walsh, Partner at Groom Law Group, sits down with a senior policymaker on the opening of the American retirement system to private markets. It is the largest pool of retirement savings in the world. They cover what the executive order changes, what plan fiduciaries are being asked to weigh, how policymakers think about guardrails, and what it means for European and other non-U.S. managers seeking access.

The U.S. shift runs alongside Europe's own push to bring private markets to savers, through ELTIF 2.0 in the EU and the LTAF and Mansion House reforms in the UK. The session closes on where these efforts converge and where they diverge.

Every manager in the room wants shelf space; the people on this stage decide who gets it. Gatekeepers from global private banks, regional platforms, and multi-family offices across the US, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia walk through approval considerations — anonymized structures and assets that cleared diligence and products that didn't, and the specific reasons why: fee structures that fail committees, liquidity terms that don't survive legal review, track records that don't translate across borders. As the wealth channel expands into partner, gatekeeper, and manufacturer at once, what does great partnership actually look like?

With equity valuations under scrutiny and borrowing costs still high, real estate is back on allocators' agendas. After a multi-year repricing, investors want to know where the cycle stands, which sectors have real demand behind them, and how to get exposure efficiently.

This panel looks across the U.S., the UK and continental Europe at where values have reset and where income is holding. It compares sectors from logistics and residential to data centers and retail. It also covers the structures investors use to get there, from Europe's semi-liquid real estate funds to U.S. exchange vehicles that let investors roll gains into new property without an immediate tax bill, and what each means for cross-border capital.

The last decade's story was an asset class going mainstream; the next decade's is where the investable universe expands. This session maps the frontier through a global lens, with the opportunity set looking different in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia than in the US: natural capital (timberland, farmland), royalties and revenue-share structures, asset-based finance, sports and media rights, and the energy and digital infrastructure being repriced by AI-driven power demand. For each, panelists apply the same three tests — is the return stream real, is the structure fair, and can the wealth channel actually access it — so the audience leaves with a genuine map rather than a list of exotica. One seat is reserved for the discipline voice: which frontiers merit a place now, and how much complexity is worth adding at all?

Instead of another survey of the secondaries market, this session runs a deal. A realistic cross-border scenario — a GP-led continuation vehicle with a co-invest sleeve and investors in three jurisdictions, priced and papered — is put to a bench of practitioners: a secondaries buyer, a GP, an LP allocator, and a fund lawyer, each reacting in role. Where does pricing land, who takes the conflicts risk, what does the LP advisory committee push back on, and where would each expert walk away? Attendees leave understanding not what secondaries are, but how the deal actually gets done — and where the pressure points sit.