Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. Welcome to MEREN Talk
Speaker 1: to Your Money, the personal finance edition of Merin Talks Money.
Speaker 1: In these bonus podcasts, we talk about the best strategies
Speaker 1: for making the most of your money. I'm mere in
Speaker 1: Sunset Web and this would be focusing on private markets.
Speaker 1: It's not a topic John and I discussed that often,
Speaker 1: except for in a minthly disparaging way, but it is
Speaker 1: something many of you have written in about. So we
Speaker 1: have decided to invite in a guest to help us
Speaker 1: talk about why you might want to get into private credit,
Speaker 1: private equity, etc. And if is an investment path that
Speaker 1: you want to go down, what exactly are the smart
Speaker 1: ways of interpreting what is out there? So with me
Speaker 1: Morning Star Chief executive Officer kun Al Capol. Morning Sara
Speaker 1: is a leading provider of independent investment insights and rating
Speaker 1: space in Chicago. Can not thanks so much for jo
Speaker 1: us today.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. Mary.
Speaker 1: Now, all of our listeners and readers will be very,
Speaker 1: very familiar with Morning starb because lots of them the
Speaker 1: first thing they will do when they go and look
Speaker 1: for a fund is they'll look up your rating on
Speaker 1: it and they'll see what they'll see, whether it's a
Speaker 1: go silver fund, a bronze fund. Except for the various
Speaker 1: different ways of rating, but everyone is familiar with the
Speaker 1: idea that when it comes to ordinary listed funds holding
Speaker 1: assets in the public markets, you are one of the
Speaker 1: go tos in the markets for information and also for education.
Speaker 1: You provide a lot of research and education for ordinary investors.
Speaker 1: But you're moving into a new ish area which is
Speaker 1: looking more at rating the private part of the market,
Speaker 1: so private credit, private equity, infrastructure, real estate, these kinds
Speaker 1: of funds. So tell us a little bit about why
Speaker 1: you're doing that and what sort of funds you'll be
Speaker 1: looking at. Vehicles should I say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's dive right in, and let me just start
Speaker 2: by saying that I think your skepticism is warranted anytime
Speaker 2: you see a flood of money chasing a trend or
Speaker 2: anything like that, I do think putting a skeptical view
Speaker 2: on things is appropriate, and I have no doubt that
Speaker 2: as there's some new products that come out in this space,
Speaker 2: there are going to be some allusy products and it's
Speaker 2: going to be a morning storage job to help investors
Speaker 2: navigate them. But if I back up further and kind
Speaker 2: of try to provide a broader view of what's going
Speaker 2: on around the world. As you know, there's just been
Speaker 2: a preponderance of money that's flowed into the private markets,
Speaker 2: and it's happened in private equity, where you see the
Speaker 2: number of companies in private markets that have taken funding
Speaker 2: from private equity far exceeding what's available in the public markets.
Speaker 2: In Europe alone, you have double the number of pe
Speaker 2: back companies relative to public company. So just to contrast.
Speaker 1: That, that is absolutely true in terms of numbers of companies,
Speaker 1: but in terms of value of companies, the listed markets
Speaker 1: still remain the higher value area.
Speaker 2: Right. Yes, the largest companies for sure are listed, and
Speaker 2: that makes sense, but it's notable that the size of
Speaker 2: private companies has gotten larger and larger, and so that's notable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is one of the things that we talk
Speaker 1: about a lot, which is this idea that companies list
Speaker 1: later and later and later if they list at all.
Speaker 1: So an awful lot of the growth that one might
Speaker 1: have previouly expected to get access to all the public
Speaker 1: markets is now only in the private markets.
Speaker 2: Correct. Now, while private equity gets a lot of the headlines,
Speaker 2: and you can see why it's much more I think
Speaker 2: enticing to write about it and talk about unicorns and whatnot.
Speaker 2: The reality is that most of the action is really
Speaker 2: in private credit, and where investors like you and I
Speaker 2: and wealth managers are going to first encounter the private
Speaker 2: markets is really in private credit. And so if you
Speaker 2: go back to post global financial crisis, a lot of
Speaker 2: the big money center banks around the world came out
Speaker 2: of that, either facing new regulations or generally taking a
Speaker 2: more cautious approach to how they wanted to manage things,
Speaker 2: or candidly being in a situation where they didn't have
Speaker 2: the capital to lend as much as they previously might have.
Speaker 2: And so that opened the door to what i'll call
Speaker 2: sort of non large banking lenders emerging, and you saw
Speaker 2: particularly private equity firms starting to step into the space,
Speaker 2: some built up insurance capabilities and whatnot to invest here.
Speaker 2: And so private credit has really taken off and in
Speaker 2: many large markets around the world, and increasing amount of
Speaker 2: debt is issued via private markets. And so what you're
Speaker 2: starting to see in some parts of the world is
Speaker 2: the arrival of products available to retail wealth investors that
Speaker 2: essentially allow them to access the private credit markets.
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about when we talk about private
Speaker 1: credit is companies that are unable to borrow from banks,
Speaker 1: are unwilling to borrow from banks, looking for alternative places
Speaker 1: to borrow money and going to private companies to do that.
Speaker 1: Is that that simple? That's what we're talking about exactly.
Speaker 2: They're raising the money the non banking financial institutions in
Speaker 2: many instances.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that debt remains tradable, just not on a
Speaker 1: listed exchange. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think tradable it could be, obviously, but they tend
Speaker 2: to be held in private hands and so they don't
Speaker 2: trade as much. Obviously. That's a bit of a distinction
Speaker 2: from what we call public high yield, which does trade,
Speaker 2: although it's very debatable as to how liquid that is
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're talking about entirely a liquid high yield
Speaker 1: to debt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that does not trade by the moment for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, what is the crossover between modern private credit
Speaker 1: and olden day's sub private ending.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think what you want to be careful about
Speaker 2: is you don't want to throw the baby out with
Speaker 2: the bathwater. There's certainly, as in the public markets, when
Speaker 2: you're investing in debt, the higher the chance of default,
Speaker 2: the greater the interest rate that you're going to demand.
Speaker 2: And you see that in private markets as well. Candidly,
Speaker 2: man and there's a high degree in my view of
Speaker 2: likely correlation between public and private markets because we are
Speaker 2: kind of in a period where you know, things have
Speaker 2: generally gone well in the public and the private markets,
Speaker 2: and so generally speaking, risk is something that I think
Speaker 2: people have been de emphasizing in a way that is
Speaker 2: going to probably be problematic regardless of whether you're looking
Speaker 2: at public or private markets if you have a correction,
Speaker 2: so I think your line of questioning maybe is heading
Speaker 2: down the path that private is maybe more risky. There's
Speaker 2: certainly some factors that make it so, but I wouldn't
Speaker 2: say that in a wholesale manner. If you look at
Speaker 2: some of the lenders and firms that have got involved,
Speaker 2: you have large firms like the Blackstones and the Apollos
Speaker 2: of the world. They come with solid reputations and the
Speaker 2: ability to do the research, just as you would expect
Speaker 2: on the public side as well.
Speaker 1: No, sure, I suppose. My question really is that if
Speaker 1: you are a company and you need burrows of money,
Speaker 1: your first point of call is going to be a
Speaker 1: bank or publicly listed markets, because maybe that would be
Speaker 1: cheaper for you. So if you end up not going
Speaker 1: to a bank, no.
Speaker 2: Not anymore. It certainly used to be the case that
Speaker 2: one could generalize in that way. But you're starting to see,
Speaker 2: even when there's large m and A taking place, that
Speaker 2: many firms are not going to the public markets and
Speaker 2: they find it quite efficient to go to private markets
Speaker 2: to raise money. And so I think that is the
Speaker 2: underlying point here, both in terms of equity and credit,
Speaker 2: is that what used to just be the purview of
Speaker 2: public markets is no longer just that you're right to
Speaker 2: be skeptical at a high level, but the underlying trends
Speaker 2: show that there is some change in terms of the
Speaker 2: nature of what's available to invest on the private side.
Speaker 1: Letter although we vaguely wonder if there won't come a
Speaker 1: day when in the equity side we'll move back to
Speaker 1: people being more interested and enlisted than private Given that
Speaker 1: as rates don't go back to their previously low level,
Speaker 1: that becomes increasingly obvious that the private equity app performance
Speaker 1: is not quite what maybe we thought it was. So
Speaker 1: we wonder if on the equity side at least you
Speaker 1: might see US wing back towards listed.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really important point. But in general,
Speaker 2: I would say that investors should expect lower returns from
Speaker 2: public and private markets going forward.
Speaker 1: Now I would probably agree subtainly in the US maybe
Speaker 1: if not elsewhere. But I suppose the point about that
Speaker 1: is that if it is the case that in times
Speaker 1: of normal interest rates, private equity returns are more or
Speaker 1: less the same as public equity returns, i e. Turns
Speaker 1: out that private equity is simply equity with not much
Speaker 1: transparency and a whole balladett why would you take private
Speaker 1: equity over public equity? And that's a question that I
Speaker 1: think we will have answered over the next decade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's totally the case, and we'll need to look
Speaker 2: at that. I think it's hard to generalize, and at
Speaker 2: least so far, our data so we own pitchbookens, we
Speaker 2: have years and years of data on this. It does
Speaker 2: show that while you're trading liquidity, you do get a
Speaker 2: little bit of return premium, and so you're right, we'll
Speaker 2: have to see. But my hunch is that the markets
Speaker 2: are going to be way more correlated on the public
Speaker 2: and private side than most people believe, and so we'll
Speaker 2: see how it clays out.
Speaker 1: We are contact me being told that we use private
Speaker 1: equity as a diversifier, but you're rather suggesting that going
Speaker 1: forward unity that is the case.
Speaker 2: I think it's true of most asset classes today that
Speaker 2: because they've all had strong runs, there's a higher degree
Speaker 2: of correlation and it's going to be harder to differentiate.
Speaker 2: That's my personal view. I realize others feel differently, but
Speaker 2: you know, you just have to look at this here.
Speaker 2: And even what happened in April, you had the public
Speaker 2: markets kind of fall sharply before recovering, and similarly, in
Speaker 2: private markets, while you didn't have a marked to market event,
Speaker 2: so to speak, you certainly didn't see deals getting done.
Speaker 2: And now again with the public markets back, you're sort
Speaker 2: of starting to see a desire to get deals done again.
Speaker 2: So it seems to me that there's more correlation than
Speaker 2: is the case. Clearly, if you can hold something for longer, though,
Speaker 2: which is the case with private equity, I think potentially
Speaker 2: the benefit is you're not trying to trade in and out.
Speaker 2: Maybe that explains some of why the returns have been.
Speaker 1: Kind of less. You can hold it for longer than
Speaker 1: you have to hold it for longer, right, correct. So
Speaker 1: when you talk about going into this market, you're talking
Speaker 1: about beginning to rate what you call semi liquid funds.
Speaker 1: Explain to us what we mean by semi liquid.
Speaker 2: Notion of a semi liquid fund in the US, it's
Speaker 2: large in the category what we call interval funds. In Europe,
Speaker 2: it's in the category of things such as altaffs, so ltafs.
Speaker 2: And the notion with these types of investment vehicles is
Speaker 2: that you can come in and out of them on
Speaker 2: a schedule or a schedule. And what I would say
Speaker 2: is that they are different, obviously from the funds that
Speaker 2: you and I started this conversation talking about, because those
Speaker 2: have instant liquidity. Essentially, if you're in an ETF, for example,
Speaker 2: it's near instant liquidity. If you're in a regular mutual fund,
Speaker 2: you at least have daily liquidity, and what you have
Speaker 2: in semi liquid funds is a situation where you get
Speaker 2: liquidity let's say once a quarter, so there's a predetermined
Speaker 2: date where you can buy in or sell out, and
Speaker 2: this allows the manager to take the assets and then
Speaker 2: put them to work in investments that are not liquid
Speaker 2: but The benefit at least of these types of vehicles
Speaker 2: is that they do provide access with some degree of
Speaker 2: liquidity relative to what a traditional private equity of private
Speaker 2: credit fund would do, which is not provide liquidity for
Speaker 2: a longer period.
Speaker 1: Tough on a manager if they know when they have
Speaker 1: to produce cash, they don't know how much cash, and
Speaker 1: if in private equity and private credit you are holding
Speaker 1: for the long term, particularly in private equity, you can't
Speaker 1: be sure that you can exit at any particular time.
Speaker 1: It's still a tough way to manage money.
Speaker 2: It's a tough way to manage money, but it's no
Speaker 2: tougher than on a daily basis when you have to
Speaker 2: provide liquidity, you know based on who's coming in and out.
Speaker 2: So I don't find that to be an insumuntable challenge.
Speaker 2: Daily liquidity funds have all kinds of challenges too. You
Speaker 2: have to kind of anticipate and hold cash for instance,
Speaker 2: to think about what's coming in and out. So I
Speaker 2: don't view that as insumountable. I think, what's the bigger challenges?
Speaker 2: Are you really adding value and providing a premium for
Speaker 2: the reduced liquidity that you're providing in that vehicle, and
Speaker 2: our ratings essentially go to try to answer that question
Speaker 2: and also to put public in private on an equal footing.
Speaker 2: So if you're going to buy a private vehicle, not
Speaker 2: only do you want to make sure that you get
Speaker 2: the benefits, but you want to make sure you outperform
Speaker 2: the public vehicles. And so we want to be conscious
Speaker 2: of not separating the public and private universes entirely. And
Speaker 2: you'll see that in our methodology when we roll out
Speaker 2: these ratings beginning here in the US and the back
Speaker 2: half of this year, that the idea is also to
Speaker 2: really rate them based on our view of whether they're
Speaker 2: going to outperform similar strategies in the public markets.
Speaker 1: And how are you going to film that view?
Speaker 2: Well, our analysts obviously are going to do the diligence
Speaker 2: as they do on public market vehicles today. So you know,
Speaker 2: it starts by working to understand the parent you know,
Speaker 2: building these vehicles, so we have a parent rating, and
Speaker 2: then from there we dig into the actual management of
Speaker 2: the fund and produce an opinion based on a view
Speaker 2: of management's ability to deliver our performance as well as
Speaker 2: you know, key factors such as.
Speaker 1: Expenses, expenses and fees are an interesting part of this
Speaker 1: whole sector. I mean that was more opaque than one
Speaker 1: would like. A lot of the time. The fee structure
Speaker 1: is something that ordinary investors have some trouble getting to
Speaker 1: grips with quite a lot of the time. The wire
Speaker 1: being included and rated right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's no different than the fight morning store
Speaker 2: of art in public markets to get common investors access
Speaker 2: to knowledge about what they are paying today. And so
Speaker 2: I think transparency is a good thing investors. I think
Speaker 2: we'll have that opportunity here in the private markets by
Speaker 2: bringing some transparency in competition.
Speaker 1: With your sense of how private equity, private credit is
Speaker 1: becoming part of the investing universe. And I talked to
Speaker 1: earlier about you know, the likes of Larry Think and
Speaker 1: how much they think one should have in a private portfolio.
Speaker 1: What do you think a portfolio should look like these
Speaker 1: days in terms of allocation to private assets for.
Speaker 2: Most rank and file investors. Let me just start by saying,
Speaker 2: simplicity really matters. And if you feel good about your
Speaker 2: portfolio and you're all in public markets of public equity
Speaker 2: and public data, I think that's fine. You don't have
Speaker 2: to change that. This isn't for everybody, and one of
Speaker 2: the most important things about investing is that it should
Speaker 2: allow you to sleep at night and to hit your goals.
Speaker 2: And if you can do that with the portfolio you have,
Speaker 2: you don't necessarily need to change that. I think for
Speaker 2: most rank and file investors going forward, if you have
Speaker 2: an interest in the private markets, the reality is, at
Speaker 2: least in the near term, it's going to be hard
Speaker 2: to get true access to private equity, and so I
Speaker 2: have a hard time saying you should be allocating X
Speaker 2: or Y, because the vehicles as yet aren't in place
Speaker 2: to provide that at scale. They will be in toime.
Speaker 2: My personal view is that where these belong is in
Speaker 2: your retirement assets. In your retirement assets, if you've never
Speaker 2: owned something like this, it's probably good to start with
Speaker 2: a very small allocation to the extent that you're interested,
Speaker 2: so that you can start to get a feel for
Speaker 2: what it means to have something like that in a portfolio,
Speaker 2: because you will really immediately understand what it is to
Speaker 2: not have the type of liquidity that you otherwise might have.
Speaker 2: And so I would say that for most investors today,
Speaker 2: starting off with no more than about five to ten
Speaker 2: percent of your retirement assets parked in these vehicles is
Speaker 2: probably an appropriate way to learn a little bit about
Speaker 2: how you feel about them, how they behave, how you
Speaker 2: want them in a portfolio.
Speaker 1: So if you are already retired plausibly even you have
Speaker 1: started draw down, this may not be the asset for you.
Speaker 2: I would say that's accurate.
Speaker 1: Well, while on the subject of retirement assets, how do
Speaker 1: you feel about the British government about Rachel Reeves's idea
Speaker 1: that some of our penchophones should be obliged to have
Speaker 1: ten percent of their assets in private market.
Speaker 2: I think it's a good idea for long dated asset
Speaker 2: pools to have exposures to the private market. So I
Speaker 2: like that idea. I'm personally not off the mindset that
Speaker 2: it needs to be prescriptive. I think ultimately these are
Speaker 2: pools of money that are and should be managed by
Speaker 2: professionals who should have clear opinions and what types of
Speaker 2: allocations they want. And you know, you certainly see around
Speaker 2: the world different pools of asset owners that have different
Speaker 2: views on this, going from some that don't put anything
Speaker 2: in private markets to some that are well known and
Speaker 2: have chosen to put close to half their assets in
Speaker 2: private markets. So I think at a high level, I
Speaker 2: absolutely agree that it's a good idea for long dated
Speaker 2: asset owners to be looking at the asset class. But
Speaker 2: I think the ultimate drivers should be matching the time
Speaker 2: wherese into the liquidity needs of those that you're serving,
Speaker 2: and so I would sort of leave that up to
Speaker 2: the individual investment officers there.
Speaker 1: That is all fascinating and really useful, and I think
Speaker 1: that we all be really really pleased with what you're
Speaker 1: doing and the idea of bringing transparency with a little
Speaker 1: bit more due diligence, et cetera to a market like
Speaker 1: this and helping people get intowitter is super helpful. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this week's Marin Talks to Your Money.
Speaker 1: If you like us, share rate, review, and subscribe wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your podcasts, although be sure to follow
Speaker 1: me in John on ex or Twitter. I'm at marinsw
Speaker 1: and John is John Underscore Stepic. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Samasadi Production, Sport and sound designed by Blake Maple's
Speaker 1: questions and comments on this show and all our shows
Speaker 1: are always welcome. Our show email is Merri Money at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot net.