Alt Goes Mainstream: The Latest on Alternative Investments, WealthTech, & Private Markets

It all comes back to the DNA.
The firms that know who they are will know who to be.
You can learn a lot about an investment firm by listening to what they say.
Alt Goes Mainstream’s AGM Originals Series - The DNA: Capturing Culture - is dedicated to capturing the DNA of a firm by listening to what they say.
The first season of The DNA stars EQT. In Stockholm, at EQT’s AIM this past summer, I sat down for conversations with nine EQT executives.
Each executive came from different parts of the firm — and different parts of the world.
Each had fascinating backgrounds and stories about how they ended up in private markets and worked to build EQT.
But there was a single throughline threaded throughout all of the discussions: the consistency and frequency that each executive talked about the firm’s mission, vision, culture, and values.
That’s why it all comes back to the DNA.
Episode 3 features EQT's Lennart Blecher.
Lennart Blecher joined EQT Partners in April 2007 and is the Chairperson of EQT Real Assets.
Lennart holds a Master of Law degree from the University of Lund, Sweden and has studied at the University of Dallas, Texas - Academy of US & International Law.
Prior to joining EQT Partners, Lennart was from 2004 to 2007 Managing Director and Senior Banker in the investment bank of Unicredit/HypoVereinsbank in Munich. From 2002 to 2004, Lennart was Managing Director at GE Commercial Finance in London.
Between 1987 until 2002, he held various position in the ABB Group, in Zurich such as General Counsel for the ABB Financial Services Group, President and Business Area Manager for ABB Structured Finance and ABB Equity Ventures.
Lennart has held various non executive positions in European banks and reinsurance companies. Lennart is a member of the EQT Executive Committee and is a Chairperson of the Infrastructure Partners Investment Committee.
Please enjoy this conversation with one of the industry's leaders in Lennart Blecher.
You can stream all the episodes on AGM’s YouTube channel at AltGoesMainstreamAGM.
Show Notes
00:00 Why the DNA Matters
01:04 Meet EQT and Lennart Blecher
01:40 From Law to Industry
05:40 Building EQT Infrastructure
09:44 Infrastructure Megatrends
11:01 Old vs New Infrastructure
12:45 Digital Energy Convergence
14:56 Active Ownership Playbook
16:26 Scale and Credibility
17:43 Wallenberg Values Culture
20:05 Educating Investors
21:29 Who Owns Assets Long Term
22:47 Platform People Limits
23:44 Doing Good Good Business
24:34 Underwriting People Culture
25:18 Closing Thoughts

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.
Today’s episode dives into what it takes to start, build, and scale an alternative asset manager.
We sat down in Stable Asset Management’s London office with Erik Serrano Berntsen.
Erik is the CEO of Stable, where he defines and executes the firm’s investment strategy. Stable is one of the largest and most tenured GP stake builders globally. The firm manages around $5B in assets and has built over 40 firms since 2006.
Stable makes strategic seed and acceleration investments to launch and scale alternatives GPs across public and private markets. With offices in New York, London, and Palm Beach, the firm backs investment firm Founders who understand that extraordinary performance requires building exceptional organizations.
Committed to education as a catalyst for change, Erik supports the LSE Alternative Investments Conference — the world’s largest student conference for alternatives, which is how we met 16 years ago — as well as Girls Who Invest and Girls Are Investors. Stable backs 100 Women in Finance and is a Founding Partner of the 10,000 Interns Foundation.
Erik holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Keble College, Oxford, and an MBA with honors and a concentration in Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Erik and I had a fascinating conversation about what it takes to be a great investor and build a unique investment firm. We discussed:
How the business of asset management has evolved since 2006.
The incentives gap between LPs and GPs — and how that evolves as GPs scale.
How GP seeding and GP stakes can be a solution to LP / GP misalignment.
How to discern a manager’s “edge" and how “edge” can change with firm growth.
The most non-obvious trait that makes for a great asset management founder.
The nuances of evergreen structures and which strategies might be better suited for evergreen structures.
The merits of the GP stakes investment strategy for LPs.
Thanks Erik for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion about GP stakes and asset management.
Show Notes
00:00 Likeability Wins
00:37 Welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream Podcast
01:50 Introduction to Erik Serrano Berntsen and Stable
04:08 Why the Name Stable
06:26 From Benchmarks to Solutions
05:31 Branding as Alts Evolve
08:11 Stable’s Two Market Gaps
08:47 Fixing LP / GP Misalignment
09:29 GP Stakes Alignment Model
09:59 Non-Market Risks vs. Operating System
11:15 How Edge Changes with Scale
14:06 Three Edges to Underwrite
16:18 Founders Think in Decades
19:53 Timing Cycles and Strategy Drift
23:31 Seed vs Acceleration Playbook
25:39 Evergreen Capital Goes Mainstream
29:01 Smaller Managers Winning Evergreen
31:19 Wealth Channel Core vs Specialist
33:25 Evergreen vs Drawdowns Debate
34:03 Evergreen by Asset Class
35:47 GP Stakes Lifecycle 
38:29 Picking Tides and Boats
39:03 Specialist Strategy Edge
40:15 Podshopification in Private Markets
41:55 What Drives New GP Formation
44:52 Self Awareness as Edge
46:31 Always Be Sourcing
48:23 Founder to Founder Trust
50:37 Lessons Running Stable
53:23 Building the GP Operating System
59:00 Capital as a Service
01:01:43 Stigma Fades in GP Stakes
01:05:18 How to Spot Manager Edge
01:08:47 Founders to Emulate
01:10:35 Communication and Closing Thoughts

A Word from Our Sponsor, Ultimus
This episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus, the full-service fund administrator and transfer agent powering asset managers in private and public markets. As alts go mainstream, you need real expertise to handle complex fund structures, connect with key distribution partners, and handle sophisticated compliance, reporting, and transparency demands.
That’s Ultimus: high-tech, high-touch solutions for over 450 clients and 2,500 funds with $775B in assets under administration. Backed by an expert team of over 1,200 employees, they place client service at the core of their business, helping you navigate complexity during your fund structuring or launch and then supporting you through every stage of growth. Whether you’re already in the market or thinking about entering private wealth, you can trust their team’s deep expertise in retail alternatives to help you reach your goals.
Learn more at ultimusfundsolutions.com or email [email protected].
We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.
Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.
Today’s episode dives into how data and market structure are shaping private markets.
We sat down in MSCI’s New York office with Luke Flemmer, the Head of Private Assets at MSCI to discuss how standardization and normalization of data can help bring efficiency, transparency, and liquidity to private markets.
Luke brings a unique perspective to private markets. He was previously Managing Director, Head of Digital Strategy for Alternative Investments at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and was Co-Founder and CEO of Lab49, a global solutions provider of investment and risk technology to asset managers and investment banks.
When the ION Group acquired Lab49, Luke became Co-Head of ION’s Capital Markets Division, delivering software and solutions to the group’s global financial services customer base.
Earlier in his career, Luke worked in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. He is a CFA charterholder.
Luke and I had a fascinating conversation about private markets market structure and how MSCI is playing a role in driving standardization, normalization, and transparency of data in private markets. We covered:
Parallels to market structure evolutions in equities, fixed income, FX, and derivatives.
Tradeoffs of transparency for private markets participants.
What it will take to build transparency and price formation in private markets.
Where investors will still be able to find durable alpha.
What standardization and normalization of data means for secondary markets.
Analogies between Greek mythology and private markets.
How secondaries has gone from a trade to a portfolio management tool.
How index creation will impact private markets.
Thanks Luke for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion at the intersection of private markets and market structure.
Show Notes
00:00 “Data Wants to be Free”
00:28 Welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream Podcast
01:02 Sponsor Spotlight: Ultimus Fund Solutions
01:57 Private Markets, Data, and Market Structure
02:17 Meet MSCI’s Luke Flemmer
04:26 From Robotics to Finance: Automation Needs Standardization
05:18 Fixed Income’s Transformation: From Trading Floors to E-Trading
06:42 Connecting the Data Across the Lifecycle
07:58 Harmonized Data → Transparency → Liquidity
08:44 Scaling vs Information Asymmetry
10:38 What More Transparency Does to Returns and Alpha
11:15 Benchmarking Privates Like Publics: PMEs and Comparable Data
12:35 Manager Skill and Illiquidity Premium
14:14 Company-Level Data & Bilateral Origins
16:19 The Ship of Theseus Parable and Should Privates Become Public?
23:17 COVID, Denominator Effect, and LP Scrutiny
23:50 The New Baseline for Private Funds
24:15 Wealth Channel Tailwinds and the Rise of Active LP Portfolio Management
25:23 Using Public Liquidity to Balance Private Illiquidity
26:15 The 85/15 Public-Private Index: Why Blend Public Equity with Private Equity
27:16 Daily Pricing Private Equity: Solving the “Stale Marks” Problem
28:15 Smoothing, Stickiness and Forced Secondary Sales
29:20 What Tech/Data You Need to Nowcast PE Daily (and What’s Still Missing)
30:31 Price Formation Feeding Better Indexes
31:34 From Secondaries to Derivatives: Lessons from Fixed Income NAVs
33:14 Building Trust in Private Benchmarks: Data Scale and Adoption Over Cycles
33:53 Unlocking 401(k)s: What Must Be True for Wealth to Go Big in Privates
37:05 Liquidity, Suitability, Risk & Factor Decomposition
39:05 Durable Private Markets Alpha (and the Index Question)
41:51 Standardizing the Language: Defining “Liquidity” and MSCI as the Connective Tissue (Wrap)
A Word from Our Sponsor, Ultimus
This episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus, the full-service fund administrator and transfer agent powering asset managers in private and public markets. As alts go mainstream, you need real expertise to handle complex fund structures, connect with key distribution partners, and handle sophisticated compliance, reporting, and transparency demands.
That’s Ultimus: high-tech, high-touch solutions for over 450 clients and 2,500 funds with $775B in assets under administration. Backed by an expert team of over 1,200 employees, they place client service at the core of their business, helping you navigate complexity during your fund structuring or launch and then supporting you through every stage of growth. Whether you’re already in the market or thinking about entering private wealth, you can trust their team’s deep expertise in retail alternatives to help you reach your goals.
Learn more at ultimusfundsolutions.com or email [email protected].
We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.
Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.
The Goldman Sachs Alternatives Summit “convened leaders across finance, geopolitics, technology, and culture” to discuss themes driving global markets.
2025’s Alternatives Summit was about “navigating a world in flux,” as the firm’s recap of its event noted. 
The event aimed to help investors cut through the noise and put together the pieces of the puzzle in a dynamic and increasingly complex world. 
Alt Goes Mainstream joined the event to have unscripted conversations with Goldman Sachs Alternatives leaders to cut through the noise by unpacking key themes and trends at the intersection of private markets and private wealth.
In this special series, we went behind the scenes and interviewed six Goldman Sachs Alternatives leaders about their current thinking on private markets and how the firm has built and evolved its private markets capabilities.
This conversation was with Jeff Fine, Partner, Global Co-Head of Alternatives Capital Formation within Goldman Sachs Asset Management, with responsibility for capital raising, product strategy, research and investor relations across private equity, private credit, real assets, secondaries, GP stakes and hedge funds/liquid alternatives. 
Jeff is a member of the Real Estate Investment Committee and Urban Investment Group Investment Committee. Jeffrey is also on the boards of GS Real Estate Investment Trust and GS Real Estate Finance Trust. Previously, he was Global Head of Real Estate Client Solutions for Goldman Sachs Asset Management and a senior real estate investor in the Merchant Banking Division for more than 20 years. Jeffrey joined Goldman Sachs in 2002 in the Merchant Banking Division as an Analyst. He was named Managing Director in 2012 and Partner in 2018. Jeff is Chairman of the Dyson School Advisory Council and a member of the SC Johnson College of Business Leadership Council at Cornell University. He is a member of the Cornell Endowment’s Risk, Liquidity, and Operations Subcommittee and the Board of Directors of the Pension Real Estate Association Foundation. Jeffrey is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Met Council at the Brookings Institution.
Jeff and I had a fascinating conversation about the intersection of private markets and private wealth, fundraising trends, and the growing role of insurers and the wealth channel in private markets capital formation. We covered:
The evolving private markets landscape.
The important role of the product specialist.
The impact of AI on investing and what it means for private markets.
What it takes to be a great investor.
The importance of the value creation process in driving investment value.
The future of capital formation in private markets.
Thanks Jeff for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion about private markets and private wealth.
Show Notes
01:05 Welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream Podcast
02:08 Jeff Fine's Background and Career Journey
03:43 Sophistication in the Market
05:05 The Role of Product Specialists
07:16 Talent and Resourcing in Asset Management 
08:01 The War for Talent in Asset Management
09:07 Investment Performance as a Priority
10:05 Balancing Origination and LP Demand
11:42 Meeting Client Needs in Wealth Channel
12:06 Transparency and Risk Communication
12:59 Growth in Private Markets
18:07 Global Capital and Diversification
19:31 Smart Allocation in Private Markets
20:58 Private Credit as a Yield Instrument
22:23 The Role of Insurance in Private Markets
24:33 Customization and Scale in Private Markets
28:55 Trends in LP Relationships
30:39 Strategic Partnerships and Cost Efficiency
31:40 Concerns About Market Valuations
32:43 Belief in a Transformative Future
35:24 Advice for LPs in Current Market
36:21 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.
The Goldman Sachs Alternatives Summit “convened leaders across finance, geopolitics, technology, and culture” to discuss themes driving global markets.
2025’s Alternatives Summit was about “navigating a world in flux,” as the firm’s recap of its event noted. 
The event aimed to help investors cut through the noise and put together the pieces of the puzzle in a dynamic and increasingly complex world. 
Alt Goes Mainstream joined the event to have unscripted conversations with Goldman Sachs Alternatives leaders to cut through the noise by unpacking key themes and trends at the intersection of private markets and private wealth.
In this special series, we went behind the scenes and interviewed six Goldman Sachs Alternatives leaders about their current thinking on private markets and how the firm has built and evolved its private markets capabilities.
This conversation was with Michael Bruun, Global Co-Head of Private Equity within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. 
He is a member of the Goldman Sachs Asset Management International Management Committee, Asset Management (AM) Private Equity Investment Committee, AM Growth Equity Investment Committee, AM Sustainable Investing Investment Committee, Asset & Wealth Management Inclusion and Diversity Council and is a member of the Goldman Sachs Firmwide Client Franchise Committee. In 2021, Michael was named Head of EMEA Private Equity within Goldman Sachs Asset Management and from 2019 to 2021, he was Head of Private Equity and Growth Equity investing for India. Michael joined the Merchant Banking Division in 2010 and worked in London and New York. Prior to that, he was a member of the Nordic Mergers & Acquisitions team in the Investment Banking Division (IBD), after initially joining IBD in 2005. Michael joined Goldman Sachs as an Analyst in the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities Division in 2004. He was named Managing Director in 2013 and partner in 2016. Michael serves on the boards of Advania, Kahoot!, LRQA, Norgine, Synthon and Trackunit. He is a founding partner of the Human Practice Foundation in Denmark and a trustee in the UK. Michael earned a BA in Economics from the University of Copenhagen.
Michael and I had a fascinating conversation about private equity, today’s investing environment, the hardest part about investing today, and how product innovation is impacting private equity’s market structure. We discussed:
How investors can approach allocating to private equity today.
The toolkit required to generate returns in private equity.
The importance of network and operating partners in value creation.
How new product innovation and new structures like evergreens and continuation vehicles are changing growth equity and private equity. 
The importance of understanding macro in a new world order of geopolitics and a new world order of investing.
The skillsets that investors need to have to be a good investor in today’s investing environment.
The hardest part about investing today. 
Thanks Michael for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion about private equity.
Show Notes
00:56 Welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream Podcast
02:04 Michael Bruun's Background and Career
02:31 Evolution of Private Equity
03:14 Impact of Market Changes on Private Equity
03:43 Operational Value Creation
04:50 Importance of Value Creation Resources
05:33 Driving EBITDA Growth
06:04 Goldman's Value Acceleration Resources
07:18 Focus on Data and AI
08:27 AI in Different Sectors
11:22 Goldman's Investment Strategy
14:28 Scale and Capital in Private Equity
15:40 Co-Investments and Evergreen Vehicles
18:11 Flexibility in Private Markets
23:53 Navigating Volatility
24:59 Post-Investment Operations
25:23 Goldman Sachs Engineering
26:05 Future of Private Equity
27:39 CEO AI Academy
28:01 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.