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Note: This is a tentative agenda, subject to change. The final agenda and speakers will be posted closer to the event date.
All times are EDT
![Jordan Hogan [273x154].jpg](https://www.aima.org/static/4d01bb52-c6b0-4890-925ac1701fb0aa94/403c7307-634a-49f8-a025fe3258f78c5a/teammember_1c723e7748f46b950a19f7ea68223e65_4a7c7e45a350/Jordan-Hogan-273x154.jpg)
9:10 Plenary panel – Market outlook
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Hear from our expert panelists on the outlook for private credit given the broader macro backdrop and how LPs are constructing their portfolios over the next 12 months. This session will cover which private credit strategies they expect to outperform, the questions LPs should be asking about their existing portfolios and what they expect to be the main talking points between private credit LPs and GP in 2026.
9:55 Fireside chat - Realigning Policy and Capital: A New Era of Partnership between Washington and Wall Street
A timely conversation about the changing nature of the relationship between policymakers, regulators, and markets, and what this profound shift means for investors globally.
10:20 Plenary Panel – Optimizing a credit portfolio: portfolio construction over a cycle
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Markets continue to suggest that 2026 will be another challenging year for credit investors. Our experts will share their views on the principles that underpin their approach to portfolio construction, managing concentration risk across public and private credit exposures across sectors, as well as how macroeconomic signals, rate changes and credit spreads influence portfolio allocation decisions over time. The session will also include practical insights on manager selection, stress testing, downside scenario planning, and the use of active portfolio management to mitigate losses and capture value through the cycle.
11:40 Masterclasses
Corporate Lending Track: AI and Private Credit: How AI’s impact will be unevenly felt across the private credit industry
AI’s impact is expected to be enormous on the private credit industry given the volume of increasingly standardized data that exists. However, the impact is expected to be unevenly felt depending on the size and focus of the manager. This session will focus on how AI’s expected impact on deal sourcing, underwriting and monitoring, highlighting the structural differences that exist between upper and lower middle market private lending.
Asset Backed Track: Portfolio Optimization across Public and Private Asset-Backed Strategies
Investors seeking to diversify their fixed income portfolios with asset based strategies are continually evaluating the trade offs between liquid public credit opportunities and the less liquid but often higher yielding private credit markets. In collaboration with our consultant partners, we examine the strengths of both approaches and outline how investors can construct an optimized allocation designed to enhance diversification while targeting competitive returns. The panel will explore the benefits and limitations of each strategy, focusing on how differences in liquidity and return profiles influence portfolio outcomes.
Advanced Topics Tracks: CRE Debt Meets Corporate Credit: Building Resilient Portfolios through Diversification
With the goal of constructing investment portfolios that perform through cycles, LPs are seeking to diversify their credit book with additional private strategies.
This master class - featuring a family office advisor, commercial real estate debt investor and corporate credit investor - will explore how corporate real estate debt may be a complementary risk/return enhancement to core direct lending in a credit portfolio.
Panelists will explore portfolio construction, correlation and manager selection with the goal of obtaining improved risk-adjusted performance, and compare approaches to sourcing loans, credit evaluation, and workouts across these different credit sectors.
12:15 Masterclasses
Corporate Lending:
Beyond Conventional Private Credit: Unlocking Alpha in the Energy Transition
This session with explore opportunities for private credit investors to capture alpha in the distributed energy sector. As well as providing an overview of this fast-growing market, our experts will explore how non-sponsored transactions offer a unique edge for investors when it comes to risk mitigation and portfolio diversification, as well as how the U.S. energy transition is likely to create new opportunities.
Asset Backed:
The Evolving Opportunity within European ABF
As higher rates reshape European credit, investors are rethinking where risk-adjusted returns can be most resilient. This session will explore why asset-backed finance (ABF) is attracting greater allocation interest—offering exposures anchored in contractual cash flows, identifiable collateral, and structures designed to protect downside through covenants, triggers, waterfalls, and accelerated amortization. Attendees will gain insight into key European tailwinds such as bank balance-sheet constraints, growing risk-transfer demand, and securitization reforms, as well as how ABF is scaling across adjacent sectors.
Advanced Topics:
Historically Low Public & Private Credit Spreads: Preparing for Rising Market Risks
Amid sharply rising global risk appetite, credit markets have enjoyed a strong run in recent years. While credit yields remain elevated, liquid credit spreads are near historic lows - a dynamic closely mirrored in private credit. Our panelists will assess how today’s liquid credit spread levels compare with historical periods of varying interest rates, the subsequent implications for returns from similar periods, and how volatility and interest rate shifts affect credit relative to equities. They will also assess current technical valuation dislocations and the use of highly liquid, convex, short-biased credit overlays to protect against broader market volatility.
1:45 Masterclasses
Corporate Lending:
Two Decades of Investing: Lessons Learned and the Power of Conviction
In crowded credit markets, the biggest risk is drifting from what made you successful. This session explores how disciplined investment philosophy, clear return targets, and repeatable underwriting frameworks help managers resist “deal pressure” and stay selective. Learn how to protect downside, and maintain portfolio integrity when competition pushes terms, pricing, and structures in the wrong direction.
Asset Backed:
The Real Estate Lifecycle: Capital, Transition, and Opportunity
Real estate assets are constantly in some period of transition and, at key inflection points, require capital to adapt to obsolescence from changing market and innovation dynamics. This panel will explore how lenders finance real estate in transition, examining how underwriting, sponsor alignment, market fundamentals, and other factors shape outcomes. Panelists will also discuss how the capital stack is evolving and where banks and private credit fit in today’s real estate financing ecosystem.
Advanced Topics:
Evolution of Credit Co-Investment: Fees, Access, Structure, and Control
Co-investment has become a central tool for both sponsors and investors in private credit. As institutional investors refine their co-investment programs, sponsors are adapting their approach to meet shifting expectations. This session will examine the expanding role of co-investment in private credit, including the evolution of fee structures, access and allocation frameworks, transaction structuring, and the practical limits of governance and control as investor demands intensify.
2:20 Masterclasses
Corporate Lending:
Financing the Real Economy of Europe in an Era of Public & Private Credit Market Convergence
As investors assess AI risks across their global private markets portfolios and cracks emerge in the private credit ecosystem, direct lending to traditional businesses across Europe has been attracting interest given the attractive spread environment and conservative leverage metrics.
Moderated by British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, Arini explores (1) The direct lending opportunity set in the European core middle market, and (2) How applying a public market credit investing lens and skill set to private credit markets can help investors avoid underwriting pitfalls in world of limited price discovery in private credit, elevated PIK levels and increased dispersion across high yield and leveraged loan markets.
Asset Backed:
Infra Credit: Powering Digitalization, Decarbonization & Deglobalization
Senior figures from Ares and OMERS will share how they are navigating the rapidly evolving global infrastructure debt landscape including a compare/contrast of different themes driving the U.S. and Europe, and how infra credit can diversify and derisk portfolios overexposed to U.S. corporate credit. The discussion will explore where investors are finding resilient, contract-backed cash flows, and how policy, supply-chain realignment, and energy transition dynamics are influencing opportunity sets. The session will also provide a practical look at how allocators are positioning infrastructure credit within their portfolios to capture a meaningful return premium while supporting the next era of economic transformation.
Advanced Topics:
Credit Opportunities beyond U.S. and Europe: Lessons from 26 Years Investing in a World-Beating, USD 2.3T Credit Market
Latin American private credit taps into a $2.3 trillion corporate credit market that remains under-levered and structurally underserved as banks retrench and public markets stay episodic. The region has historically shown strong public credit outperformance against EM, Asia and the U.S. This phenomenon is anchored in consistent higher spreads, and comparatively lower default rates, with supply–demand imbalances and regional risk premia helping sustain elevated yields without relying on higher leverage. The presentation will explore sourcing and structuring in less efficient markets, cycle-tested risk management, local information advantages, and how this opportunity set differs from more mature U.S. and European private credit markets.
3:55 Plenary Panel – Capital Convergence: How Retail and Semi-Liquid Funds Are Transforming Private Credit
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Demand for income, diversification, and downside protection grows beyond traditional institutional channels. Panelists will examine what is driving retail interest in private credit and how semi-liquid structures are reshaping portfolio construction, liquidity management, valuation, and disclosure considerations for all types of investors.
4:40 Closing Panel: Continuation vehicles and choosing your exit wisely
This session will discuss the growing role of continuation vehicles within private markets and what they mean for private credit investors. It will address key questions for investors when assessing retaining their exposure via a continuation vehicle, key design considerations funds as well as whether continuation vehicles are likely to become a permanent feature of the market.
