CAASA Alternative Perspectives 2025: Private Market Focus

Overview

TBA

When

  • September 25, 2025
  • 8:00 am – 6:00 pm ET

Where

Borden Ladner Gervais LLP

Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower, 22 Adelaide St W #3400, Toronto, ON M5H 4E3

2024 Speakers

2024 Agenda

Day 1

  • September 25, 2024
  • 8:00 am – 6:00 pm

  • September 25, 2024
  • 8:00 am – 6:00 pm

Conference Day

8:00 am

Breakfast & Registration

Enjoy breakfast and ready yourself for a content and networking-packed day.

8:30 am

Insurance-Linked Securities – Uber-Diversifiers

Investors are constantly seeking assets and strategies that can reduce volatility in most scenarios and market regimes – especially if their asset base is intended to provide income over the short to moderate term (e.g., mature DB plans and endowments) since volatility is more a friend of accumulation plans. Insurance-Linked Securities (or ILSs) have very few connections to the vagaries of the capital markets, making them well-proven diversifiers. This panel will discuss their efficacy in a portfolio, the various types that can be employed, and how investors should perform diligence on the options presented.

Michael Nicks, Pepperdine University Endowment
John Butler, Cohen & Co.
More to be added

9:15 am

Opportunities & Challenges in Real Estate & Infrastructure

Tremendous returns have been made in real estate and infrastructure for many investors over the last many decades – and some would say that this area provides the best opportunity going forward for virtually all investors and especially those whose time horizon is appropriately long.  This panel will provide insight into opportunities that might fit many investor portfolios as well as the challenges that might present themselves when investing in them and other similar securities/offerings.

Speakers to be added

10:00 am

Table Talks

Your opportunity to join a table and discuss the topic on offer, lead by one of our sponsoring CAASA members.

Please move to a second topic/table at 10:30am to allow a spot to another attendee for the latter half of this session.

11:00 am

Rates, Recession, and Recoveries: How three Rs affect private credit

Private credit has grown from a cottage industry providing a link between off-market investors and borrowers to being integral parts of some of the largest financial supermarkets/platforms on the planet.  As more capital has flowed to this previous backwater, participants’ (borrowers, lenders, and investors/LPs) sophistication has increase commensurately in many cases.  As such, macro-economic factors such as the health of the economy can lead to macro-prudential issues: rising rates siphons money from the borrowers (since most are floating rate notes), a recession can crimp revenues and profitability, and recoveries (which have been robust but might be worsened by the aforementioned) might hamper returns to investors. This panel will test the efficacy of private lending portfolios in today’s economy.

Ken Lee, Gentai MIC
Peter Pulkkinen, Lombard Odier
David Burbach, YTM Capital Asset Management

11:45 am

ESG in a Nutshell

It’s well-known that ESG, sustainable investing, and the plethora of other monikers can be difficult to pin down with a universal meaning or description.  While credit ratings of the same name between agencies are about 90% correlated, those on ESG scales are around 60% correlated.  This talk will bring together the typical ways one can look at the ‘goodness’ of a company, security, or portfolio and provide pragmatic ways to use this knowledge.

Speaker TBD

12:00 pm

Keynote Fireside: The Role of Private Markets in Economies and Portfolios

Keynote will begin at 12:15PM

This fireside features two major players/investors in private markets as they discuss how private markets – including real estate, private equity and venture, private/alternative lending, infrastructure, and more esoteric areas such as ILS and data centres – have come into their own in the economy and portfolios of investors of all types and sizes.  They will brief the audience on how they see the market for these offerings and discuss the potential (known and somewhat unknown) pitfalls that investors should be cognizant of when contemplating these investments.

Speakers TBD

1:00 pm

One-on-one meetings & Refresher

Or one might call it ‘recess’ – a time where all attendees can meet with whomever they like (possibly facilitated by the conference app).  CAASA staff are on hand to help folks find one another, but should not be relied upon to ‘book up one’s day’ or provide concierge service at the conference – but we are happy to help members meet/identify folks on an ad hoc basis.

2:00 pm

Have Secondaries Lost their Lustre?

Every once in a while an idea gains great traction and it’s only a matter of time before a segment of the population calls it ‘a bubble’ or ‘ripe for a fall’ – but in a number of cases it is a secular and persistent change that led to its adoption. Have Secondaries, which have been an investor darling for years because of their instant vintage diversification, portfolio approach, and potentially well-priced entry points, reached their zenith? This panel will talk to where these investments will go from here.

Speakers TBD

2:30 pm

Rooting out Value: The why and how of farmland

Perhaps the world’s oldest investment, farmland has proved to be a winner for generations of landed gentry, hard-scrambling pioneers/sod-busters, and today’s family farms.  They were the focus of many documentaries and movies in the 1970s when inflation reared its head in earnest last but have been eclipsed by other investments like commodities, condos, and cryptocurrencies of late.  Is farmland the next leader in an inflation-hedged portfolio?  And if so, how can investors make the most of this exposure?  This panel will brief everyone on this and offer a way forward to invest in the space.

Kent Willmore, AGinvest Farmland Properties Canada
Greg Kalil, Stormont Partners
Robb Nelson, Farmland Lending Canada

3:00 pm

Coffee Break

Take a stretch, grab a bit/sip, and get ready for more!

3:30 pm

Portfolio snapshots of three MFOs

Where is the ‘smart money’?  Pensions oversee sometimes vast pots of money ($100s of billions) and have access to opportunities not available to just any investor.  Single Family Offices are as varied as they are numerous (if you’ve met one family office…).  Investment dealers usually have a limited line of private markets offerings.  In this panel, all will hear from three long-standing multi-family offices who have worked with their clients in many areas of private market investment and have a fiduciary duty to do their level best for their client.  This should be an entertaining view of the alts and private markets landscape!

Trevor Hunt, Northwood Family Office

More to be added

4:00 pm

Reception

Time to make a few more connections and chat about the day

6:00 pm

End of conference

See you at our next event!

Registration

End Investor means pensions, foundations/endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and single family offices. Intermediary investors means Multi-family offices, investment advsiors/dealers, wealth managers, and investment consulting companies and +1 means the first delegate is gratis but each additional delegate attracts a small charge. Manager and service provider delegates must be CAASA members in good standing and pay the requisite per person fee ($1,000 + tax).

Delegate pass pricing will increase to $1,500 per person (+ tax) on Sept 12.

Sponsorship is an additional $3,500 and does NOT include a delegate pass (those are purchased separately in all cases).

Note : Single Family Office means the those related to the family or full-time members of the investment team. All parties must not have outside commercial interests, as determined by CAASA, such as investment funds seeking external money, investment banking operations, or other activities that would also be performed by our members.

Pension and other institutional investor (e.g., E&F) attendees need to be full-time employees of the investor. Acting as a consultant, board member, or advisor (whether compensated or not) is not sufficient. Individuals who have an outside commercial interest are required to be employed by CAASA members and pay the requisite delegate pass fee.

CAASA Members

Members of CAASA including asset managers, service providers, multi-family offices, and investment advisors/consultants.

Registrations opening soon.

Event Registration Closed

Non-Members

Investors such as pensions, foundations & endowments, and single family offices.

Registrations opening soon.

Event Registration Closed

2024 Sponsors