Davis Polk partner and Investment Management practice head Leor Landa and partners Andrew Ahern, Oran Ebel and Chris Healey were featured in Private Equity International’s Private Markets 2030 issue discussing the use of institutional and retail products being managed side-by-side.

Pointing to the key considerations for sponsors that are embarking on a foray into retail products, Chris said, “There are a lot of buzz words swirling around the market right now, from permanent capital and evergreen vehicles to specific types of products such as business development companies (BDC), interval funds and tender offer funds. What is crucially important from a sponsor’s point of view, however, is to focus on an investment strategy where you have a successful track record and then map that onto the various product wrappers that are available for retail investors. Being thoughtful about ensuring that fit at the outset can help to significantly improve the likelihood of success when it comes to selling the product on the backend.”

Discussing what private market strategies will come next, Leor said, “One area where we are seeing a big push is with secondaries. Tens of billions of dollars of secondaries retail funds have been raised over the past couple of years, to the point where it is starting to reshape the secondaries market. I do not see any reason why that will slow down.”

“We are also seeing a focus on private equity, particularly in relation to qualified purchasers. In addition, real assets encompassing both real estate and infrastructure, are experiencing a big push,” Oran added. “I think real assets sometimes feel more acceptable to retail investors from a conceptual perspective. They like the idea of financing something tangible, whether that means buildings or bridges, toll roads or solar plants. On the same theme, in private credit we are starting to see a move into more asset-backed strategies.”

Andrew noted, “These [retail] products are also a good fit for real assets because these products tend to work well with long-dated asset portfolios. We are seeing increasing interest from managers in evergreen vehicles (whether or not they are planning to access retail capital), and those strategies with longer hold periods can be a better fit. The traditional 10 year, closed-end fund life simply does not map well onto certain types of real estate and infrastructure strategies, and I expect that we will see more creative fund structures used to solve for some of those incompatibilities.”

When asked if having a retail product affects other traditional funds that a sponsor may be managing, Leor said, “If you go back 10 years or so, then I think there was some concern among sponsors that moving into the retail world would somehow cannibalise their existing portfolio of institutional products. A brave few bulge bracket firms then went out and tested that proposition. They launched retail funds and now not only has their retail business exploded, but their institutional business has grown tremendously as well. Those fears, it seems, were unfounded. There is now a clear proof of concept that these two products can co-exist within the same platform, which is why we are starting to see upper-mid-market managers show interest in developing a retail strategy and pretty soon that will become common in the core mid-market as well. The scope of managers that are going to participate in this market is expanding quickly.”

“Davis Polk: Retail push can complement traditional funds,” Private Equity International (October 20, 2025) (subscription required) 

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