Sunniva Kolostyak: We are here at the Morningstar Investment Conference and I'm here with you, Dylan Cox from PitchBook. You are head of private markets research, and you are going to speak to people here today about what's exciting within private markets to financial advisors. So, can you give us a summary of what exactly is it that makes it so exciting at this moment in time?

Dylan Cox: Yeah, I think the main trend that we've seen is that private markets and the private wealth segment have become increasingly important to one another. So, for private equity managers, they're increasingly looking to private wealth and financial advisors, private banks as a means of fundraising. Whereas financial advisors and the private wealth segment is increasingly allocating to alternatives including private equity and venture capital given some of the impressive returns we've seen over the last decade or so.

SK: So, if we narrow that down and look at Europe in particular, what is it that's going on here that's fun?

DC: So, more recently in European venture, I think the thing that really surprises a lot of people is that while capital investment figures have come down from their 2021 and 2022 peaks, they're still at historical records if we include those last couple of really boom years during that COVID peak there. And on the private equity side of things, it's been quite surprising that fundraising has remained really resilient in Europe in particular, even in the face of a much higher interest rate environment and one that many now expect to be a higher for a longer interest rate environment, which of course puts pressure on leveraged buyout deal activity.

SK: So, do you see this developing like this in the future as well? How is the future looking for private markets?

DC: So, all eyes certainly are on interest rates, whether that's to make the math pencil out for leveraged buyouts or when it comes to discount rates for future cash flows of startups or how asset allocation is done for institutional limited partners. That being said, we do still expect and forecast very strong long-term AUM growth in private markets and that includes not just private equity but venture and other strategies we have seen more interest in lately such as private credit and secondary funds.

SK: Well, Dylan, thank you very much for joining today.

DC: Thank you.