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

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.
What happens when you bring Tokyo-Neapolitan style pizza to New York? 
You get one of the hottest new reservations in a city full of top restaurants and pizza spots.
 
Are there similarities between pizza and asset management? 
Different styles of pizza appeal to different people. Same in asset management. But there is one constant: the way the pizza is made matters.
At Pizza Studio Tamaki, the Tokyo-Neapolitan pizza is made with acclaimed pizzaiolo’s Subasa Tamaki’s dough flown in directly from Japan. Every detail matters. Every flavor is unique. And it all blends together into a unique pizza experience.
That’s something Nomura Asset Management International is aiming to do in the U.S. with both public and private markets.
We recently sat down at Pizza Studio Tamaki for a live podcast with Nomura Asset Management International CEO Shawn Lytle, with the wealth channel in the audience, to discuss pizza, patterns in asset management, and private markets. 
Shawn’s deep experience working for a number of the industry’s largest asset managers and understanding of what the wealth channel needs across public and private markets set the table for a great discussion on the evolution of asset management, how culture impacts how firms work with the wealth channel, and how to bring an international brand into the U.S. market.
We ate the pizza while we podcasted, and we even did a pizza rating. Spoiler alert, PST was really good. So was the podcast.
Bio
Shawn is Chief Executive Officer of Nomura Asset Management International, where he is responsible for overseeing the business, investment teams, and strategies for clients. He joined Nomura Asset Management as part of Nomura’s acquisition of Macquarie Asset Management’s US and European public investments business in 2025. He also serves as the President of Nomura Funds (formerly, Macquarie Funds) and oversees registered vehicle governance in the US and Europe. Shawn is a member of the Nomura Asset Management International Executive Committee.
He has more than 30 years of asset management experience. Before joining Macquarie in 2015, he held several management and equity investment roles at UBS Asset Management and various roles at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
Shawn is a member of the Investment Company Institute (ICI) Executive Committee. He is also a board member of OppNet and Philadelphia Financial Scholars, in addition to being the former Chairman of the National Association of Securities Professionals (NASP).
He earned a Bachelor of Science in marketing from The McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University.
Thanks, Shawn, for sharing your expertise, wisdom, and passion about asset management and private markets.
Show Notes
00:00 Tokyo Pizza Meets NYC
01:07 Ultimus Fund Solutions Sponsor Message
02:05 Meet Shawn Lytle
02:18 Why Japanese Pizza Studio Tamaki
05:09 Four Firms Four Cultures
06:10 Craftsmanship And Consistency
06:52 Bringing Nomura To US
07:21 What Great Managers Share
09:00 Choosing The Right Partner
10:29 Curated Menus Fewer Managers
12:50 Beta Is Free Alpha Matters
13:48 Nomura Platform Advantages
15:39 Winning In Japan ETFs
17:11 Sports Marketing Lessons
22:29 Private Markets Next Wave
27:59 Pizza Rating And Wrap Up

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 info@ultimusfundsolutions.com.
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 podcast dives into the world of data and decision-making in private markets. 
We were in the studio with private markets polymath Jeb Altonaga. Jeb is SVP, Head of Business Development in Private Markets at Arcesium, where they have built a financial management data platform aimed at solving the data normalization problem across public and private markets.
Jeb’s multihyphenate background puts him in a position to see the data challenges for GPs and LPs alike from all different angles as Arcesium works to take unstructured data and turn it into structured data and insights to help asset managers run their businesses more efficiently and serve LPs better.
Jeb’s background spans Citadel, where he was Head of Relationship Management & Operations in Asia-Pacific, to being an LP as the COO at Blue Pool, a large family office based in Asia, to running capital formation and as COO at Australian activist investment firm Sandon Capital. He joined Arcesium in August 2025 to spearhead the execution of business strategy and the product roadmap for Arcesium’s software solutions in private markets.
We had such a fascinating discussion given the various vantage points that Jeb has had in private markets. We covered:
How to think about data normalization and why it matters.
Where and when transparency makes sense.
Which asset classes may benefit from less transparency.
What secondary markets might do to transparency in private markets.
What a tradable market in private markets could look like.
The evolution of private credit’s market structure.
What Jeb would make more efficient about private markets.
Why it’s important to be a lifelong learner.
Bio
Jeb Altonaga leads business development for Arcesium’s Private Markets segment, drawing on over 25 years in alternative investments, capital formation and funds management. He founded Clearglass Capital Partners, a private capital advisory firm, and previously served as COO at Sandon Capital in Sydney and Partner & COO at Blue Pool Capital (& Pinyin) in Hong Kong and began his buy-side career at Citadel Investment Group in Chicago. Jeb holds an MBA from NYU Stern and has served on the board of Hedge Funds Care Asia.
Thanks, Jeb, for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion about public and private markets.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Alt Goes Mainstream
01:25 A Message from Ultimus Fund Solutions
02:22 Jeb’s Career Path and Lessons
04:05 Why Jeb Joined Arcesium
04:40 From Loan Tapes to AI
06:33 Building in Private Markets
07:26 The Missing Middle Layer
08:55 Do GPs and LPs Want Standards
10:38 LPs Must Drive Change
11:33 Family Office Perspective
14:23 AI Adoption for Different Generations
18:11 Private Markets Need a Desktop
21:02 APIs versus SFTP plumbing
23:25 Evergreens and Secondaries Push Transparency
28:49 Secondaries as Portfolio Tool
29:11 Transparency vs Information Edge
29:48 Private Equity Transparency Limits
30:10 Why Private Credit Opens Up
31:48 Market Structure Highway Analogy
33:08 Tech Stitching Private Data
34:14 Golden Source Data Layer
35:19 Arcesium Intelligence Agents
35:39 Front to Back Platform Buildout
36:50 Why Firms Differ on Same Stack
39:27 Tech First Culture as Edge
41:04 Private Credit Marketplace Debate
43:41 Liquidity Mismatch and Gates
46:24 Secondary Trading Tech Readiness
47:37 Security Master Fix and 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 info@ultimusfundsolutions.com.
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 podcast dives into the world of real estate with one of the industry’s largest managers and investors in industrial real estate.
We sat down in Franklin Templeton’s New York City office with real estate veteran Josh Pristaw, Managing Director, President of Clarion Partners, a $73.3B AUM real estate investment firm within Franklin Templeton’s alternatives platform.
Josh discussed data and durable demographics, which are drivers of the deeply researched investment process that his team at Clarion employs to invest in industrial real estate.
Josh’s background, which spans developing shopping centers to investing in real estate in Brazil to running one of the industry’s leading single-family rental investing platforms at Pretium, has helped him lead Clarion, one of the industry’s largest industrial real estate investment platforms.
Josh and I had a fascinating conversation, connecting data and demographics to actionable insights in real estate investing. We covered:
The durable demographic and secular trends driving Clarion’s investment strategy in healthcare real estate.
How 10,000 people turning 80 years old in the US daily is creating an “aging in place” dynamic that is impacting housing supply and self-storage demand.
Why industrial demand is tied to e-commerce growth.
How Clarion takes a quantitative approach to real estate investing, evaluating sub-markets using recursive factor analysis.
How diversification and liquidity drive Clarion’s open-ended fund strategy, with 95% of the firm’s $73.3B in AUM residing in open-ended funds.
Why data centers pose liquidity, capex, valuation, and concentration challenges for open-ended fund vehicles.
Bio
Josh Pristaw, equity owner and Managing Director, is President of Clarion Partners. He is a member of the Firm’s Executive Board, Investment Committee, and the Board of Directors for Clarion Partners Holdings, LLC. He joins Clarion from Pretium, where he served as Senior Managing Director and Head of Pretium’s real estate platform. Prior to Pretium, Josh co-founded GTIS Partners.
He has more than two decades of real estate experience across property sectors and functions, including acquisitions, asset management, portfolio development, and capital markets. He joined Clarion Partners in 2025 and has been working in the industry since 1997. Josh graduated from Dartmouth College, B.A. (1997).
Thanks, Josh, for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion about real estate investing and your data-driven approach to the asset class.
Show Notes
00:00 Introduction
01:14 Message from Ultimus Fund Solutions, Our Sponsor
02:44 Josh Career Origins
03:55 Real Estate Scale Shifts
04:51 Understand Demographics and Mega Trends
05:35 Senior Housing Supply Gap
07:12 Housing Turnover and Storage
08:24 Data Models Across Sectors
09:21 Data Driven Allocation Lens
09:57 Four Drivers of Returns
12:16 Timing Bets and Liquidity
15:17 Lessons Learned From Building In Brazil
18:06 Invitation Homes Data Ops
19:44 Clarion Data Science Edge
21:06 Quant Meets Relationships
22:11 Asset Class Specialists 
23:16 Industrial Demand Megatrends
23:32 Ecommerce Trillion Wave
24:16 Efficiency And Taller Warehouses 
4:58 Robotics Power Premium
26:54 Infrastructure Constraints 
29:44 Why Not Data Centers
34:27 Supply Glut More Sellers
33:10 Liquidity Supply Imbalance
36:12 Evergreen Fund Playbook
39:26 Portfolio Rotation Discipline
41:16 Career Advice and Wrap Up

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 info@ultimusfundsolutions.com.
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 podcast takes us to Oslo, Norway, for a very special conversation with Christian Sinding, the former CEO of one of the industry’s leading alternative asset managers, EQT.
Christian’s hometown of Oslo provided an ideal setting to showcase both the Nordic heritage that represents EQT’s DNA and the global ambitions of the firm (and one of its portfolio companies, 1X) that is looking to fund Europe’s first €1T company. 
Christian has been one of the leaders in the alternative asset management industry. He was most recently the CEO of EQT, where he steered the firm on an impressive growth path as a public company and helped scale the firm to almost €300B AUM. 
He’s now focused on another ambitious project: the Scaleup Europe Fund, a fund that EQT is managing and has support from the European Commission to invest in Europe’s most promising technology companies. 
With 1X Tech’s NEO humanoid robot joining us for part of the discussion, Christian and I had a fascinating conversation about the past, present, and future of alternative asset management and Europe’s technology ecosystem. Christian and I discussed:
The evolution of EQT and alternative asset management.
What Europe needs in order to fund the future.
How Europe can harmonize its capital markets infrastructure.
What it will take to create the €1T company.
What it means for companies to have global ambition.
The what, why, and how behind EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund.
Why EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund invested in ICEYE and Lovable.
Why EQT invested in 1X.
How Christian’s “why not” attitude can take Europe’s technology ecosystem to the next level.
Come for the conversation with Christian, stay until the end to meet NEO.
Bio
Christian Sinding is an Institutional Partner at EQT with nearly 30 years of experience at the firm. He served as CEO and Managing Partner from 2019 to May 2025, during which EQT quadrupled in size, becoming the fourth-largest company listed on the Swedish stock exchange.
As CEO, Christian oversaw EQT’s public listing on Nasdaq Stockholm in 2019 and guided the firm’s development as a publicly listed organization, with a strong focus on governance, transparency and long-term, responsible ownership.
Prior to becoming CEO, Christian served as Head of EQT Equity from 2011, where he played a central role in building EQT’s core investment franchise and expanding the firm’s international footprint. Under his leadership, EQT scaled from a market value of approximately €6 billion at listing to around €40 billion in 2025, further strengthening its position as a global leader in private markets.
Christian chairs the EQT Council and the Global Investment Forum, serves as Chair of the Investment Committee for the Scaleup Europe fund, and serves on the Investment Committees for EQT Equity and EQT Future. He is also a board member of the EQT Foundation, supporting EQT’s long-term societal engagement.
Christian brings deep experience in leadership, governance, public markets and long-term value creation, with a focus on resilience and partnering with founders and management teams to build durable, globally competitive businesses.
Thanks, Christian, for sharing your passion, expertise, and wisdom about private markets and building companies and for such a fascinating conversation.
Show Notes
00:00 Meet NEO, the 1X Robot
00:06 Europe’s $10B Gap
00:18 The “Why Not” Mindset
00:29 Lovable and The Trillion Euro Ambition
01:37 A Message From Our Sponsor, Ultimus Fund Solutions
02:35 Welcome Christian Sinding
02:40 Nordic Edge on Innovation
05:38 EQT Origins and DNA
08:01 Inspiring Change Not Control
08:36 Full Potential Planning
10:46 Troika Model Explained
13:42 Winning After the IPO
16:14 Capital Markets Playbook
20:56 Why Venture and Growth
28:44 Europe’s Innovation Gap
28:56 Politics Push Reform
29:37 Why Europe Can Win
30:47 Building Bigger Markets
31:18 A European Nasdaq Dream
32:28 From Local To Global
33:36 Founder Ambition Shifts
34:40 Lovable Trillion Dollar Vision
35:32 EU Inc And Capital Reforms
36:56 Private Longer Needs Capital
37:52 Scaleup Europe Fund Explained
39:53 What Makes It Different
43:02 Defining Success And Flywheel
46:47 The “Why Not” Mentality
48:58 Some Time With NEO, The 1X Robot

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 info@ultimusfundsolutions.com.
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 podcast unpacks the importance of ownership and equity, and how the world’s largest private equity firm (source: PEI 300) has helped create a culture of ownership within its portfolio companies and more broadly across the industry.
With the backdrop of KKR’s studio in New York and the firm fresh off the heels of celebrating its 50th Anniversary, we sat down with KKR’s Co-Head of Global Private Equity Pete Stavros for a live conversation during AGM’s RIA Field Trip to discuss how culture can be a competitive advantage and how it defines much of what KKR does both internally and with its portfolio companies. 
Pete has not only been a leading private equity investor at one of the industry’s largest firms, but he’s also been a pioneer in one of the industry’s most important initiatives: enabling employees of private equity-backed companies to share in ownership of the companies where they work.
The firm’s Broad-Based Employee Ownership has delivered on its promise in many ways, with KKR’s recent 14x (and $4.75B) exit on CoolIT providing all 650 CoolIT employees with cash payouts that ranged from approximately one year to more than eight years of annual pay, which, as Pete noted in our conversation, was “life-changing for many employees.” 
Pete and I had a fascinating conversation about the culture of ownership at KKR, the evolution of the firm’s private equity platform, why it’s so important to make employees owners, and how it’s created a ripple effect in the industry. We covered:
KKR’s “we not I” culture.
Why the most important trend in private equity going forward will be a shift from “balance sheet and income statement arbitrage to total cultural transformation.”
Why and how culture is an advantage — and how KKR sustains its competitive advantage.
The power of a scaled platform and why the division of labor is important as firms grow.
What Pete means by “persistence in process.”
How can companies encourage people to act like owners, and why is it so important for employee retention and productivity?
How can sharing equity ownership be used as a tool to change culture?
The impact the private equity industry can have through its ability to cascade change.
Bio

Pete Stavros (NewYork) joined KKR in 2005 and is Co-Head of Global Private Equity. This includes oversight of assets across Europe, Asia and the Americas and traditional large and mid-cap private equity, core and growth equity. Prior to this role, Pete served as Co-Head of the Americas Private Equity platform. He is a member of several investment committees at KKR. As an investor, Pete has helped lead a number of successful investments across sectors and sizes, including HCA Healthcare, Nielsen, Gardner Denver / Ingersoll Rand, Capsugel, Capital Safety, Hyperion, Flow Control Group, Charter Next Generation, Minnesota Rubber and Plastics, Geostabilization International, Crosby Group and CHI Overhead Doors. Prior to becoming Co-Head of Americas Private Equity, Pete led the Industrials industry team where he pioneered an innovative employee engagement and ownership model. This approach has been successfully implemented at more than 90 KKR companies and has positively impacted more than 200,000 workers. Pete is the Founder and Chairman of Ownership Works, a non-profit focused on building a worker ownership movement globally and enhancing the financial resiliency of the workforce. The goal of Ownership Works is to create more than $20 billion of wealth for working families over the next decade. Pete is also the Founder and Chairman of Expanding ESOPs, an organization focused on dramatically expanding the number of Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) in corporate America. Prior to joining KKR, Pete was an investor with GTCR Golder Rauner, where he was an investor in the healthcare sector. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry, magna cum laude, from Duke University and an M.B.A. with high distinction, Baker Scholar, from Harvard Business School.
Thanks, Pete, for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion on private equity and making everyone an owner.
Show Notes
00:00 Live From AGM Field Trip at KKR Studio In NYC
00:29 A Message From Ultimus Fund Solutions
02:00 Meet Pete Stavros
02:09 The Story of Joining KKR
02:33 From Interviews To NYC
03:08 All About Collaboration
03:02 A No Star Culture
04:03 How Culture Is Sustained
04:43 Ritz-Carlton Analogy
05:23 No Star Culture
05:29 Culture Shapes Investing
05:54 Platform Resources Edge
06:24 Capital Markets Bench
06:41 Macro And Ops Experts
06:52 Making Resources Work
07:52 Consistency And Process
08:40 Evolving Value Creation
08:46 Gardner Denver / Ingersoll Rand Case
09:25 Value Engineering Method
10:09 Warehouse Teardown
10:54 Customer Feedback Loop
11:25 Sixty Million In Savings
11:50 Culture As The Next Frontier
12:16 Defining Transformation
12:27 Workforce Crisis Stats
13:08 Problems Are Global
14:28 Underwriting Culture Risk
15:12 Leadership Makes It Work
16:00 Ownership Done Right
17:06 BBEO Origins
19:10 Early Mistakes Learned
19:30 Scaling To 85 Companies
19:59 CoolIT Exit Results
20:48 Closing The Wealth Loop
21:12 Financial Literacy Journey
21:45 Truck Loan Lesson
23:39 Building Resilience Stack
24:15 Exit Support Package
24:37 Industry Adoption
25:40 Ownership Works Launch
27:04 Street Loan Cautionary Tale
28:00 Why Share The Playbook
30:02 Taking Ownership Global
30:56 International Rollout
31:31 Local Culture Differences
32:15 State Of Private Equity
32:40 Is Software Dead
33:09 KKR Software Approach
34:26 AI At Portfolio Scale
34:55 One Hundred Thirty Tests
35:35 Buying The Fear Trade
35:49 Accounting Is Not Dead
37:08 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 info@ultimusfundsolutions....