The market for alternative assets – and the services around them – has matured a lot over the last decade. On Friday, Brian McMahon, global head of alternative sales within BNY Mellon’s asset servicing, went on the virtual stage of PostTrade 360° Stockholm to give a view of what is now routine and what is still challenging.
“Alternatives means lots of different things to different people – be that hedge funds, fund-of-hedge-funds, debts, private equity, infrastructure, real estate … and indeed, within each of those segments you have different fund products,” says Brian McMahon, interviewed in the conference by his BNY Mellon fellow Paula Avraamides, global client management MD.
“And I would say, moreover, that you need to look at how your operations are set up to do this, how you are systematically running these funds, because this is not insignificant and it does take specialized product and specialized knowledge.”
So complexity will remain, despite the area maturing quickly.
“Our clients and the investors are far more sophisticated today than they were 10–15 years ago, and they expect more information. And indeed, the fund construct, and how investors are coming in, continues to evolve,” says Brian McMahon.
“I’ve been in BNY Mellon over nine years, and alternatives have grown from 525 billion to over 1.5 trillion. And now, if that’s happening to us, then you can imagine what’s happening in the overall market.”
• PostTrade 360° Stockholm 2021 took place on 25–26 March. News around the event is gathered here.
• Find the 44-page event magazine here.
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