The tariff shock has moved from headline to hard data, inflation is proving sticky, and the great rate question has flipped: after last year's cuts, central banks are on hold — and the debate is whether the next move is down at all, even as long-term borrowing costs stay stubbornly high. Cailin Birch, Global Economist at The Economist Intelligence Unit, returns to open the conference with the EIU's read on the year ahead: whether the dollar's turbulent run marks genuine diversification away from US assets or a cyclical swing, where growth is actually holding up — across the US, Europe, Asia, and the Gulf — and how the AI investment supercycle and a volatile geopolitical map are repricing energy, infrastructure, and capital itself. 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.

Chris Brown and Kendra Isaacson of Mindset, a premier Washington, DC lobbying firm, read the American political landscape — what the aftermath of the 2026 US midterm elections, congressional dynamics, and shifting regulatory posture mean for private markets, in plain terms.

Then Kevin Walsh, Partner at Groom Law Group, a prominent D.C. law firm specializing in employee benefits and retirement plans, sits down with a senior policymaker on the most consequential retirement-policy shift in the industry: the opening of the American retirement system to private markets. What the executive order actually changes, what plan fiduciaries are being asked to weigh, and how policymakers think about the guardrails—direct from someone helping shape the policy.

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?

The US tax-advantaged exchange structures that let investors roll real estate gains — and what happens when non-US investors want the American real estate play. How the structures actually work, where the line sits for foreign capital, and what sponsors are building to open the door. Twenty minutes, one expert bench, direct questions welcome.

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.