PCD Leeds Conference | Panel 6: Private Capital Investment Trends | 3 March 2026

The final session before the afternoon tea break brought a different register to the day — less about navigating government policy and more about identifying opportunity. David Disneur, who leads the Private Markets Group at Union Bancaire Privée in the UK, and Tom Klouda, who heads BDO's northern private client business having started his career in private equity M&A tax, offered a combined perspective that was at once strategically ambitious and technically precise.

What Private Markets Actually Means

Disneur opened with a clarifying definition. Private markets, in his framing, refers to investments where value is primarily driven by underlying business performance and cash flow generation, rather than short-term price movements and macro sentiment in public markets  . That encompasses private equity, venture capital, private debt, real estate, and — the area he described as most exciting right now — infrastructure. Klouda added useful texture from a practitioner's perspective: the category has expanded enormously in recent years, from the classic leveraged buyout funds of his early career to a much broader universe of debt funds, family office co-investments, direct deals, and sector-specific vehicles. "Family offices," he noted, "are now private capital providers in themselves" — wealthy families increasingly bypassing fund structures entirely and deploying capital directly into businesses where they have domain expertise.

The structural case for private markets as an allocation for high net worth clients is underpinned by a number of observable trends, Disneur argued. First, private markets offer a significantly broader opportunity set than public markets: in Europe, estimates suggest that fewer than 10% of companies with revenues above £100 million are publicly listed, with only slightly higher figures in the US.

At the same time, public equity indices have become increasingly concentrated, with a large share of returns driven by a relatively small number of US mega-cap companies, many of which are in the technology sector. Private markets can therefore provide access to a broader and less concentrated opportunity set across sectors and geographies.

Secondly, historical performance: while outcomes remain dependent on manager selection and entry timing, private markets have, in many segments, outperformed public markets over the past 15 years. One of the key reasons is that many of today’s most valuable companies have chosen to remain private for longer. This means a significant portion of their growth and value creation occurs before any public listing. As a result, investors who only access companies at or after IPOs may miss a meaningful part of the value creation journey.

Infrastructure: The Theme of the Moment

If there was a single investment theme that dominated the session, it was infrastructure. Disneur cited an extraordinary figure: by 2040, the world will need approximately $23 trillion of investment in energy transition and power infrastructure alone. Government balance sheets across Europe cannot finance that gap. "That creates a significant funding opportunity," he said — although outcomes will still depend on execution and manager selection, the  structural nature of this theme is likely to persist over the long term.. The sub-themes within that opportunity — electrification, energy storage, industrial decarbonisation, utilities modernisation, data centres, and digital infrastructure — represent, in his view, a category that combines the equity upside of growth assets with the contractual cash flows of more defensive investments. "It is a compelling long-term theme," he concluded.

Klouda offered a characteristically grounded counterpoint — albeit isolated, citing the cautionary tale of Thames Water as a reminder that infrastructure investments can be highly leveraged and structurally vulnerable when cash flows disappoint — but agreed on the underlying thesis. The key, both panellists emphasised, is selectivity. Infrastructure means very different things across the spectrum: from the large - scale long-term projects to the listed renewable infrastructure investment trust to the private crematoria and motorway service area operators that Klouda described as "businesses you don't think of as infrastructure" but which generate highly reliable, recession-resistant cash flows. "Death and taxes," he observed, with a glance at his colleagues from the morning panels — "I've gone into one side of the business."

Access, Entry Points, and Tax Considerations

A significant portion of the session addressed a question directly relevant to the private client community in the room: how clients actually get access to private market investments, and at what minimum commitment levels. 

Disneur outlined a tiered approach to accessing private markets: “Evergreen” (or semi-liquid) funds with relatively low minimum investments, offering periodic liquidity and diversified exposure within a broader portfolio context; traditional closed-end drawdown funds and direct investments into individual assets or companies, both offering deeper exposure but requiring more meaningful capital commitments and longer investment horizons; and, lastly, bespoke mandates combining all three approaches, reserved for clients allocating substantial amounts

. He likened the different approaches to a spectrum of vehicles: semi-liquid funds as high-performance yet practical 4x4s; closed-end funds as supercars — more powerful but requiring greater commitment and less flexible to manoeuvre; and direct deals as Formula One — highly specialised, high-conviction investments requiring precision, expertise and a tolerance for complexity. "

Klouda turned to the tax overlay — a dimension that is frequently underweighted in conversations about private capital access. Several risks merit particular attention for UK private clients. Many private capital funds originate in the US and have been structured for large institutional investors — pension funds, endowments, insurance companies — not UK individuals. The bespoke reporting that UK taxpayers require from these structures is not automatically provided, and HMRC now expects UK-level data rather than accepting approximate filings. US fund structures may also create attribution of income at the investor level, with extreme cases potentially generating US tax filing obligations for UK clients. Family investment companies holding debt instruments from private capital vehicles may face fair value movements that create dry tax charges — taxable income without corresponding cash receipts.

Perhaps most strikingly for the private client audience, Klouda highlighted the IHT dimension: assets previously held within a qualifying trading business, attracting full business property relief, will typically not qualify for BPR once converted into cash or private fund investments post-exit. "You could have something which is relatively illiquid and for inheritance tax purposes will not benefit from any of the reliefs," he warned. The transition from business owner to private capital investor is not just a financial shift; it is an IHT exposure event that requires immediate planning attention. His closing message was the same as Disneur's, approached from a different angle: "Go in with your eyes open. If you have leverage with your clients, go through the terms of what you're investing into. And try to bespoke it if you can." In private markets, as in much of what the day's panels had addressed, the cost of not taking advice early enough is paid in full, and in retrospect.