Private equity dealmaking lost significant steam in the second quarter of 2025 after tariff policy announcements triggered widespread market volatility. According to Bain & Company's Private Equity Midyear Report 2025, deal values in April dropped 24% below Q1 monthly averages while deal counts fell 22%, with the IPO market essentially shutting down as companies like Klarna paused public offering plans amid trade uncertainty.

According to S&P Global Ratings' latest scenario analysis, private credit portfolios face mounting pressure from the Trump administration's tariff policies, with at least 10% of middle-market companies directly vulnerable to trade disruptions. While the immediate impact may be contained due to the sector's domestic focus, second-order effects including sustained inflation, weakened consumer spending, and market volatility could create significant challenges for highly leverag

Savina Rizova, co-chief investment officer and global head of research at $790 billion Dimensional Fund Advisors, delivered a sobering assessment of private credit during her appearance on Bloomberg's The Credit Edge podcast.

Cesar Estrada, private markets head at Arcesium and former State Street executive who managed $1 trillion in assets, warns that alternative asset managers face a critical technology bottleneck as they diversify beyond traditional strategies. Speaking on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast, Estrada argues that firms expanding into evergreen funds, wealth management, and asset-based finance are hitting operational walls that threaten growth.

Steve Klinsky, founder and CEO of New Mountain Capital, sat down for an extensive interview about his 44-year journey in private equity, from co-founding Goldman Sachs' first buyout group in 1981 to building New Mountain into a $55 billion alternative asset manager. Klinsky, who witnessed the industry grow from 20 firms managing $1 billion to 5,000 firms managing $5 trillion, argues that private equity has evolved from a financing mechanism into a sophisticated business-build

Dr. Ashby Monk, Executive Director of Stanford Research Initiative on Long Term Investing, reveals how pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and endowments—managing $140 trillion globally—operate fundamentally differently from typical businesses.

Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, sat down with Barron's Andy Serwer to discuss the fundamental restructuring of investment markets. Rowan argues that the traditional view of "private as risky, public as safe" is obsolete, as public markets have become increasingly concentrated and correlated while private markets now offer diversification across the entire risk spectrum.

AI will underwhelm in 2 years but overachieve in 10, says Blackstone CTO who warns data quality trumps flashy AI tools.

Insurance giants pivot 62% into private assets as inflation fears drive $14T sector away from traditional investments toward illiquid markets.

Private credit surged to $1T, largely bank-funded, raising systemic risk concerns as loans increasingly resemble traditional banking.

In Brief: Keith Ashton and David Ells, partners and portfolio managers at Ares Management's Alternative Credit division, joined...

Private credit has lost its edge as "undiscovered" opportunity, warns Oaktree's Howard Marks amid $1.5T market growth.

Eric Mogelof, head of Global Client Solutions at KKR, reveals how the $640 billion alternative investment giant transformed from serving only institutions to aggressively pursuing private wealth over the past five years. Speaking on the Capital Allocators podcast, Mogelof identifies a structural market shift where individual investors allocate just 2-3% to alternatives compared to institutions' 20-50%, representing trillions in potential capital flows.

In a recent Financial Times piece, Oxford professor Ludovic Phalippou mathematically dismantled private equity's favorite performance metric, revealing that Internal Rate of Return (IRR) calculations are fundamentally flawed and deliberately misleading. Major firms like KKR claim 25.5% gross IRRs since 1976, while Apollo boasts 39% gross returns—numbers that would theoretically create impossible wealth levels exceeding global GDP if actually sustained.

Private equity is emerging from a challenging period with distributions finally exceeding capital contributions for the first time since 2015, while global deal value rebounded 14% to $2 trillion in 2024. According to McKinsey's Global Private Markets Report 2025, this marks the beginning of recovery after three years of difficult conditions caused by rising interest rates and economic uncertainty.

In Ares Management's recent "In the Gaps" webinar, Co-Heads of Alternative Credit Joel Holsinger, Keith Ashton, and Kevin Alexander discussed key trends affecting private credit markets in 2025. The panel highlighted how recent market volatility, flattening credit curves, and demographic shifts are reshaping private credit opportunities.

What's New MSCI's Q4 2024 Private Capital Benchmarks Summary reveals a private markets landscape struggling to maintain momentum, with...

PitchBook's "2029 Private Market Horizons" report forecasts global private capital assets under management (AUM) will reach $24.1 trillion by 2029, up from nearly $19 trillion today, reflecting a more moderate 5.2% annual growth rate compared to the rapid expansion of the previous decade.

PitchBook's Q1 2025 US VC Valuations and Returns Report reveals an unprecedented concentration of capital, with AI & machine learning companies capturing 71.1% of total VC investment value while representing just one-third of all deals. This bifurcated market shows AI continuing to command premium valuations while the broader venture ecosystem faces pressure.

The US economy experienced a 0.3% GDP contraction in Q1 2025, its first real decline since 2022, as trade policy uncertainty severely disrupted business planning and market confidence. According to PitchBook's "False Start" Q2 2025 Quantitative Perspectives report, the April "Liberation Day" tariff announcement has shifted the US from expected sustained growth into potentially recessionary territory.