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Alternatives are essential

As allocations grow, alternative investments play an increasingly critical role in portfolios. The need for an approach that is scalable, disciplined, integrated, technology-enabled, transparent and based on fiduciary partnership has never been greater.

Championing a new era of alternatives

Growing demand and complexity in private markets calls for a new era of alternatives to overcome long-standing hurdles for investors. We are helping to evolve the industry to overcome those challenges and defining a new kind of partnership for our clients.

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00:00:00:00 - 00:00:12:26

RICK RIEDER

Now it's a pretty extraordinary gathering together of different opinions, different perspectives. Clients of ours from around the world, engaging on topics that range the whole gamut.

00:00:12:27 - 00:00:26:20

MIKE PYLE

As an investor, as somebody who thinks hard about markets and asset allocation, there's nothing more satisfying than being in direct conversation with our clients who are thinking about the same problems, thinking about how they're going to solve them.

00:00:26:20 - 00:00:42:18

AMANDA LYNAM

There was a noticeable tone of optimism and proactivity amongst the clients that we met with. There was an acknowledgment that the opportunity set is very dynamic. But rather than kind of retreating, clients were trying to be proactive and think about how to reposition their portfolios in this environment.

00:00:42:19 - 00:00:52:16

BRENT PATRY

While there's a note of caution out there, there's certainly a lot of hope and optimism. And I think some agreement that there's resiliency in the economy and resiliency in the capital markets.

00:00:52:17 - 00:00:59:28

DIANA SCHWARTZ

They are thinking about how to navigate the markets in today's environment, volatility, how do they introduce more private markets into their portfolio.

00:00:59:29 - 00:01:07:25

JEFF SHEN

Alternative data, machine learning, artificial intelligence are really, thriving, yeah, in this type of environment.

00:01:07:26 - 00:01:10:22

MATT HARRIS

We’re in what I would refer to as a golden age for infrastructure, right? I mean, the next 25 to 50 years are going to drive a significant investment cycle in infrastructure.

00:01:20:13 - 00:01:57:22

RICK RIEDER

Now we start every investment theory around what is the risk-free rate, and then you build off of that. What I think is interesting about what we're talking about today, is we're talking about, you know, now more so than ever in markets, is actually the risk free rate is it actually risk free? And there’s actually stability in a whole series of other assets public, private. How do you build in a different set of portfolio tools? It used to be fixed income was interest rates. Now it's income, is it public, is it private? What part of the yield curve, is it convex is it not convex.

So the whole myriad. And I think you learn from a lot of different people in terms of, you know, where do you go with that? Where do you think the best value is. So it's exciting to hear about what people think about it.

00:01:57:23 - 00:02:13:19

AMANDA LYNAM

There are lots of pockets of opportunity. Some of those pockets, I'm surprised at how much Europe has come up in the conversation so far. There's been a lot of discussion about banks and private credit working together as part of this financing continuum. Lots of comments about dispersion.

00:02:13:20 - 00:02:54:06

MIKE PYLE

What I think we've clearly seen over the past couple of months, is an unwind in, some sentiment, sentiment that maybe was a little extended, coming into the start of this year around, the US being the only show and the only story in town. And so, what have I been, you know, suggesting to clients? I've been saying, listen, I think it's hard to take big directional views on some of these questions, questions that are going to play out not just over quarters, but years or decades, you know, but how in the markets that we face right now, can we still generate alpha, can we still generate diversification? And there I think, you know, the answer is there are ways of doing that. And our investors are delivering.

00:02:54:07 - 00:03:22:03

AMANDA LYNAM

So I attended a credit panel earlier this morning, and I would say the overwhelming theme was a focus on kind of back to basics credit work. So focusing on underwriting, on structure, on quality of businesses and really kind of zooming in and finding opportunities amid the volatility. A lot of focus on geographical diversification. But I would say in general, the framework was kind of just how do we make sure that the back-to-basics credit work can see these companies through to the other side, and also find opportunities for investors?

00:03:22:04 - 00:03:33:00

RICK RIEDER

It's a little bit of a kid in a candy store in that if you're intellectually inspired by what's happening in markets, industry, philanthropy, healthcare. This is where you can get a bunch of it.

00:03:33:01 - 00:03:45:14

MIKE PYLE

Our investors are stronger because of our dialogues with our clients, and we recognize how lucky we are to be able to convene such an extraordinary group as this, and to participate in conversation. So, thank you all.

2025 Milken Conference

The annual Milken conference is an opportunity for industry leaders to come together and discuss opportunities in the market, and how we can help our clients overcome new challenges. See our highlight reel of the event.

2025 Private Markets Outlook

Hear from our private markets senior leaders as they discuss the past year, explore where the opportunities are for each asset class, and take a close look at some of the structural shifts that are reshaping our world.
Read the report Read the report
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Partnerships in action

BlackRock partners with companies that possess deep local operational knowledge to unlock private market investment opportunities in Asia Pacific.

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Hamish MacDonald, Head and CIO of APAC Real Estate, BlackRock

Alastair Nash, CEO, Wentworth Capital

Hamish You can see thematically we’re actually leaning into what is often called alternative sectors and, in some cases, called social infrastructure. Real asset investors leaning more and more into infrastructure assets, if we can find real estate that looks like infrastructure from a cash flow perspective, then we think that that’s going to have a deep liquid exit.

Hamish Alastair, we’ve known each other for coming on 15 years now. We’ve worked together for nearly five years.

Hamish And we are very, very proud of the portfolio that we’ve built together with Urban Logistics Co. We had an absolute alignment of, of interests as partners going into that strategy. Onto our new thesis, and this is in life sciences where we have recently done a deal to establish a new operating platform called Area 53. I’m very proud to say with Wentworth Capital and we’ve bought two seed assets in Sydney. Can you tell us a little bit about the thesis? Why life sciences.

Alastair It is a sector that, as you mentioned has played out offshore. And there’s a lot of growth in the Australian context. There is no focused, pure play life science real estate platform, but converse to that, there is a very vibrant and healthy life science sector. there’s a number of universities that have huge requirements for lab space and office space, but not just the universities. It’s corporates, government, venture capital, a whole ecosystem of tenants that that interact with each other So that really began the exploration phase of the strategy. And it felt like a very natural follow on to what we’ve been doing together in logistics.

Hamish Specifically, what types of investment opportunities are you looking at in the life sciences space in Australia?

Alastair The most active at the moment is targeting REITs that need to raise capital to fund development pipelines The second area where we’re getting a lot of traction is with the universities themselves. They all have large life science programs and ambitions around life science, but don’t necessarily have the capital to invest into the infrastructure to provide that.

Hamish As a private equity real estate investor, why do you choose BlackRock to partner with in those circumstances?

Alastair A number of reasons. Speed of execution has been everything. We definitely benefited from the first mover advantage in last mile logistics, and we are now benefiting from the first mover advantage in life science. Having a capital partner that has global perspectives has seen this play out in other markets. Therefore, has high conviction, can mobilize large pools of capital and move quickly, allows us to take advantage of these very compelling opportunities.

Alastair And following on from the trend around global insights, what else are you and the BlackRock platforms seeing globally that could be applicable to the Asian market?

Hamish We definitely see a continued path to finding sectors that have been well established and are successful in these Western markets and bringing them down into Australia or at least finding where those assets are in Australia and then aggregating those. We need to find sectors that have got good growth prospects at the same time. So we’re really looking for sectors that A. Have strong supply and demand prospects; B. Are going to be deeply in demand by large scale global investors at our exit and; C. Are quite new or nascent in their journey in the Australian context. So we look at sectors like childcare centers, for example. We like sectors like self-storage if we can find a way to access it. And so you can see thematically we’re actually leaning into what is often called alternative sectors and in some cases called social infrastructure.

MKTGH0125A/S-4135299

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Hamish MacDonald, Head and CIO of APAC Real Estate, BlackRock

Alastair Nash, CEO, Wentworth Capital

Hamish You can see thematically we’re actually leaning into what is often called alternative sectors and, in some cases, called social infrastructure. Real asset investors leaning more and more into infrastructure assets, if we can find real estate that looks like infrastructure from a cash flow perspective, then we think that that’s going to have a deep liquid exit.

Hamish Alastair, we’ve known each other for coming on 15 years now. We’ve worked together for nearly five years.

Hamish And we are very, very proud of the portfolio that we’ve built together with Urban Logistics Co. We had an absolute alignment of, of interests as partners going into that strategy. Onto our new thesis, and this is in life sciences where we have recently done a deal to establish a new operating platform called Area 53. I’m very proud to say with Wentworth Capital and we’ve bought two seed assets in Sydney. Can you tell us a little bit about the thesis? Why life sciences.

Alastair It is a sector that, as you mentioned has played out offshore. And there’s a lot of growth in the Australian context. There is no focused, pure play life science real estate platform, but converse to that, there is a very vibrant and healthy life science sector. there’s a number of universities that have huge requirements for lab space and office space, but not just the universities. It’s corporates, government, venture capital, a whole ecosystem of tenants that that interact with each other So that really began the exploration phase of the strategy. And it felt like a very natural follow on to what we’ve been doing together in logistics.

Hamish Specifically, what types of investment opportunities are you looking at in the life sciences space in Australia?

Alastair The most active at the moment is targeting REITs that need to raise capital to fund development pipelines The second area where we’re getting a lot of traction is with the universities themselves. They all have large life science programs and ambitions around life science, but don’t necessarily have the capital to invest into the infrastructure to provide that.

Hamish As a private equity real estate investor, why do you choose BlackRock to partner with in those circumstances?

Alastair A number of reasons. Speed of execution has been everything. We definitely benefited from the first mover advantage in last mile logistics, and we are now benefiting from the first mover advantage in life science. Having a capital partner that has global perspectives has seen this play out in other markets. Therefore, has high conviction, can mobilize large pools of capital and move quickly, allows us to take advantage of these very compelling opportunities.

Alastair And following on from the trend around global insights, what else are you and the BlackRock platforms seeing globally that could be applicable to the Asian market?

Hamish We definitely see a continued path to finding sectors that have been well established and are successful in these Western markets and bringing them down into Australia or at least finding where those assets are in Australia and then aggregating those. We need to find sectors that have got good growth prospects at the same time. So we’re really looking for sectors that A. Have strong supply and demand prospects; B. Are going to be deeply in demand by large scale global investors at our exit and; C. Are quite new or nascent in their journey in the Australian context. So we look at sectors like childcare centers, for example. We like sectors like self-storage if we can find a way to access it. And so you can see thematically we’re actually leaning into what is often called alternative sectors and in some cases called social infrastructure.

MKTGH0125A/S-4135299

BlackRock is tomorrow’s alternatives platform

Our US$327.5B platform is designed to deliver outperformance with true partnership across a range of investment solutions in: real estate, infrastructure, private equity, credit, hedge funds and alternative solutions. We continue to innovate, leveraging our technology, our scale and our fiduciary model to better serve our clients.
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Alternative investment strategies

Private Debt
Discover leveraged finance, multi-strategy and credit solutions

Opportunities include: direct lending, opportunistic, special situations, distressed

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Hedge Funds
Solutions across equity, event driven, relative value global macro and risk

Opportunities include: long/short equity, event driven, relative value, global macro, risk premia, hedge fund solutions

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Infrastructure
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Opportunity include: infrastructure equity, infrastructure debt, infrastructure solutions, listed infrastructure

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Multi-Alternatives
Meet BlackRock’s multi-alternative portfolio management team

Opportunities include: diversified alternatives, alternatives solutions

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Private Equity
Explore direct, co-investment, primary and secondary private equity

Opportunities include: direct co-investments, primaries, secondaries, open-end direct, direct

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Real Estate
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Opportunity include: real estate debt, real estate equity, real estate securities

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