“’Alternatives’, for me, is a misnomer. It is a major part of allocation today,” said BNY Mellon’s Brian McMahon on stage in Copenhagen.

Brian McMahon – EMEA region head of private equity, real estate and debt business development with BNY Mellon’s alternative investments services – entered the stage of Copenhagen’s Axelborg Wednesday morning, as part of PostTrade 360 Copenhagen.

Himself, he prefers to use the term “private markets”.

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Grows fast

Private debt is today one of the big, and fastest growing, asset categories, Brian McMahon pointed out. It provides an alternative to holding real estate, and a different profile from private equity. And it is currently just about as big as these two.

Yet, post-trade operations in the area are still a major challenge.

“There is no such thing as straight-through processing,” said Brian McMahon.

Came up in several sessions

The conference featured a number of touchpoints on the alternatives topic, including a dedicated panel discussion. Notably, application manager Thomas Anker from Danish labour market pensions fund Pensam mentioned that a third of his company’s €16 billion under management is invested in illiquid assets.

The PostTrade 360 Copenhagen conference on the 22–23 May gathered 160 delegates – for 24 content slots with 29 speakers. The full agenda can still be found here. Brief posts were posted throughout the two days on our LinkedIn page, and here at the news site you will find articles tagged PostTrade 360 Copenhagen.