Draghi also mentions in his report that Europe’s productivity issue is driven largely by the cost of energy, which is notably higher than in the US.
Energy transition is vital to making Europe more competitive. “EUR600 billion will be needed just on clean energy over the next five years; storage systems, efficiency solutions,” remarked Roberto Quagliuolo, Deputy Head of Private Equity, Tikehau Capital.
European pension fund capital is significant but it is not yet being used the right way to finance innovation and decarbonization. This is because pension systems are not structured to contribute to economic growth as most are PAYG (pay-as-you-go) systems focused on retirees rather than long-term investment.
“We invest in private equity because it offers the right risk profile. Investing in VC is not attractive enough for us at the moment,” remarked an executive of a large European pension fund.
The French government is encouraging more private savings to allocate into private markets but this will take time. “We need support from the government but we also need a lot of education. There’s a lack of understanding on the merits of private markets,” suggested Claire Chabrier, Managing Partner, Private Equity, Amundi Alternative and Real Assets. She noted that thanks to digitization, Amundi is much more able to offer digital products to its clients.
Europe should look to build on its VC ecosystem but doing so will need public as well as private capital. There was a sense of urgency among speakers that this has to happen to avoid destroying what is still a fairly nascent VC community, compared to the US.
When asked to share their views, 50% of the audience said working on the transition of portfolio companies would contribute to Europe’s sustainability agenda, while 43% said sustainability-oriented venture capital would achieve it.
Most likely, a careful balance will need to be struck with some suggesting that for Europe to regain its competitive edge, it will depend on both listed and unlisted markets playing a role; in a VC context, that means providing a clearer path to IPO. “If we want to build European champions we need to raise huge amounts of money in a short period of time. The listed and unlisted worlds should come together,” commented Adrien Perret, Executive Director, Fonds de réserve pour les retraite (FRR).
Private equity investors like Tikehau Capital believe that it is less about innovating and more about investing in, and accelerating existing technologies, to urgently address the productivity gap. “We invest in field specialists, power cable manufacturers. VC is relevant but over the long-term, especially as it relates to energy efficiency and resilience of Europe’s power grid,” suggested Quagliuolo.
Climate and energy transition should not only be thought of as being solely about decarbonization. It is also about building energy resilience, food security. Climate technology investors are finding that being able to explain this, and show how technology is able to address these challenges, is a strong story for investors and one that they increasingly appreciate.
But here’s the rub: while Europe is home to an estimated 30,000 climate start-ups and scale-ups, compared to 14,300 in the US, in many technologies Europe is still lagging behind the US and China.
This has caused some to re-open their investment thesis and as Serge Younes, Global Head of Sustainability at mid-market PE firm Investindustial, revealed: “We’re good at industrials but there is this massive value chain of mid-cap companies.”
He said they invested three or four years ago in a specialty chemicals company that produces resins for the space industry and realized that because of its heat resistance qualities, the firm had a technology that could be applied to thermal casing EV battery packs. This has resulted in higher revenues for the firm.
It is these opportunities that founders need as they look to achieve the next level of growth, and become attractive to growth equity and private equity firms in Europe.
Big investors like Apollo apply a value-oriented private equity investment thesis, investing in EBITDA positive companies. They do this across two areas: mid-market firms that have platform growth potential and take privates of larger companies that maybe don’t have the right balance sheet to successfully transition.
The second area is private credit, where the Apollo team sees huge opportunities in Europe supporting the climate ambitions of large incumbents. “We have a long standing relationship with Air France where we provide large debt solutions. And in this particular case we provided a EUR1.5 billion financing solution secured against the KLM air miles programme,” Ewa Jackson, Managing Director, Client & Product Solutions Group, Apollo. EUR100 million was ring fenced to incorporate an ESG element into Air France’s traditional financing structures to help meet their climate ambitions.
Jackson stated: “More capital-efficient models and structured credit solutions are driving the next step change in the industry.”
Industrial players and LPs are recognizing the cost of inaction, as climate policies are increasingly driven by science-based targets rather than political agendas. “Three years ago, 90% of companies didn’t measure carbon footprints – now, 50% are aligned to net-zero pathways. The easy part is done. Now we need real CapEx for deep transition,” stated Serge Younes.
The exit environment for climate tech is strengthening although firms are not allowing themselves to be seduced by the “green premium” tag; rather, investors must focus on superior technology and economic viability. This was stressed by Danijel Visevic, General Partner, World Fund. “There’s a green industrial plan being published in February. We need to stop planning and act now to develop new technologies, and scale those technologies to be able to build future proof companies that can drive future transformation.”
GPs are turning to digitization and AI tools to enhance their own internal operations, particularly as it pertains to sourcing deals, and LP reporting; for example, using agents (or chatbots, as they were previously called) to automate and make it easier it to comply with side letters and changes to LPAs.
Aymeric Marraud des Grottes, Partner at RAISE, highlighted that GPs are going to need to further digitize to make sure they have an accurate view of data. This will be necessary to better understand where portfolio company performance is coming from, to enhance portfolio construction. “We need to set up a modern data stack aggregating all the information from our portfolio companies,” he said.
Looking ahead, Audrey Soussan, General Partner, Ventech, suggested that rather than try to compete with the US and China, Europe could find a way to use its deep talent pool to build ethical AI champions: “We care about data privacy in Europe so let’s try to build AI which is protecting this data. If the US, China want to enter our market, they would have to play by our rules of the game.”
Just as the institutional marketplace has bifurcated, with large or mega-cap funds on one of the spectrum and small, mid-sized funds on the other, so too will the private wealth marketplace as the wealth revolution gathers pace. This is likely to occur across multiple wealth channels, as private managers seek to make investing in evergreens as easy as possible for clients, including sophisticated family offices who have, for years, been able to access private equity using traditional closed-ended funds.
However, not every family office necessarily wants the complexity of multi-drawdown vehicles. Evergreens, while attractive to mass affluent investors, could also find that large institutional investors choosing to use them in the coming years.
An estimated $85 trillion of private wealth transfer is expected within the next 20 to 25 years. This offers a significant tailwind for both GPs and banks who are busy populating their shelves with products. Last year, evergreens grew by 20% to approximately EUR24 billion.
Daniel Imhof, Managing Director, iCapital, explained that evergreens compound immediately as opposed to going through drawdowns and J-curves. Solving these things makes it quite exciting for clients, banks and distributors.
“Alternatives are not just an alternative any more .. and if you’re not taking into account private markets, you’re betting against private markets. We’re moving from a 50/50, 60/40 portfolio to a 50/30/20 portfolio, where 20% is in private markets,” said Imhof. In terms of asset interest, private credit was the most popular last year he said, followed by private equity and real estate/infrastructure.
Fabio Osta, Managing Director, Blackrock, echoed this. He said the firm expects to see significant growth in credit and infrastructure: “They represent 20% of the market today, but we expect that to grow to 30%.”
It is clear that evergreens are fueling significant interest among wealth advisors, as mass affluent investors increasingly hear about the virtues, and return potential, of private assets relative to public assets. Richard Hope, Global Co-head of Investments at Hamilton Lane told the audience that 70% of wealth advisors (300 were surveyed) believe evergreens improve conversation with clients. Some 30% of the survey respondents said that they would increase evergreens to 20% of their portfolios, “which is a major increase from past indicators. There’s definitely demand for evergreens, this is not just a push from distributors,” said Hope.
Tailored investment solutions was cited by 56% of the audience as the most important factor for a successful distribution partnership, followed by strong ongoing support and education. Indeed, education, and its importance thereof, was a recurring point emphasized by numerous speakers at IPEM Cannes | Wealth across both days.
“It is a new asset class so it is essential for clients to understand the underlying assets,” said Corinne Schreiber, Managing Director, Investor Relations at Astorg. “Private equity has a lot of nuances, whether it’s the split between PE and VC, or the differences between feeder funds and evergreen funds.”
When firms like Ares started their push into private wealth the ducks weren’t quacking, but they are now. 90% of sales have been done through advisors explained Mark Serocold, Head of EMA Wealth Management Solutions, Ares. He noted two levels of resistance exist: at the advisor/gatekeeper level and at the individual client level.
“Education is key. As soon as people hear that there are gates on the product, they say they don’t need them as they can make 25% on the public markets.”
Part of the misconception, which has added to resistance, is liquidity: i.e. what the liquidity of private markets looks like across different asset classes. “And also that public markets are safe because of liquidity but private markets are not,” noted Véronique Fournier, Head of EMA Wealth Distribution, Apollo. She added: “We have a responsibility to provide high quality onboarding, education and reporting to further the access to private markets.”
As product design evolves, in response to a higher number of funds coming to market, some would like to see more use of technology and further evolution on the user interface, to make the investment experience as clear as possible. When fundraising, track record, brand reputation and fund economics are regarded as the most important factors.
“We probably also don’t want to launch too many funds, the last thing anyone wants are funds that start at EUR30 million and remain at EUR30 million for several years. A fund not growing is not helpful for anyone,” stressed Serocold.
During the morning, delegates also had the chance to hear about the trends shaping private debt, as well as fascinating VC/PE investments insights from the perspective of a single family office hosted by Calista Direct Investors, and featuring His Royal Highness Prince Felix of Luxembourg, Patron of Observatoire.
Rajaa Mekouar, Founder and CEO, Calista gave insights on investment preferences among families. Currently, healthcare and deep tech are the most popular sectors, with over 50% of families optimistic on the performance of PE/VC. Resource constraints are an issue, however with 51% of families reporting a lack of resources for portfolio monitoring. “First time funds tend to outperform and we love emerging managers,” said Mekouar.
Macro updates and the impact on private credit markets were discussed during the private debt summit. According to Andrew Davies, Head of private debt, CVC Credit, asset flows into the US “are driving a lot of activity from a re-pricing and M&A perspective.” There is a lot of activity in the mid-market – $25 million to $75 million EBITDA range – helped by the fact that spreads are holding up compared to some spread compression in the large-cap space.
Europe’s healthcare investment landscape presents significant opportunities for investors.
Some of the key trends that were highlighted during IPEM Cannes | Wealth included the rise of AI-designed drugs and synthetic biology, as well as advancements in cell and gene therapy – particularly non-viral vector delivery systems. Panelists underscored the importance of understanding market dynamics and existing healthcare practices to identify viable investment opportunities.
“I think 2025 will be the year for AI genesis of discovery platforms,” suggested Valerie Calenda, Managing Partner, Head of Innovation, Merieux Equity Partners. “The other thing that is amazing to me is the cell engine therapy move that we are seeing. We are moving from ex vivo, time consuming, extensive manipulation to direct individual cell engineering which will generate new drugs in this space: drugs that are more efficient, less costly and it’s what we need to serve a larger number of patients.”
Private equity investors are seeking out growth buyout opportunities in healthcare companies that are both fast growing and highly profitable, cash flow positive businesses.
“In terms of emerging drug classes we particularly like non-viral vector delivery mechanisms for gene therapy,” explained Amit Karna, Partner, Keensight Capital. “We think it’s going to be safe and effective and also cheaper to produce so you can get it to more patients. That’s a space that we’re monitoring very closely.”
Healthcare investors also expect there to be a potential boom in discovery from AI generated molecules that can do things non-AI generated molecules are able to do. “We are looking at companies which develop tools for better prediction or better diagnostics of pathologies, tools that give better access to care at hospital, tools to improve or optimize aero development of molecules for the production of molecules,” added Karna.
A notable shift towards metabolic diseases was also discussed, exemplified by growing interest in GLP1 therapies to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The discussion emphasized the challenges of scaling adoption in healthcare, the inertia that can benefit long-term investors – particularly in ophthalmology – and the impact of robotic technologies in surgical procedures.
Discussing the data and AI landscape, panelists explored the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on the global landscape, highlighting milestones such as AlphaGo‘s victory in 2016 and the subsequent propulsion of AI innovation reminiscent of a ‘Sputnik moment’ for the industry. AI is moving towards productivity, distribution, end user value creation and business impact revenue generation. “All the action is moving towards portable AI and this is where safety in technology will become critical,” said Charles-Edouard Bouee, Co-founder, Adagia Partners.
The world is entering an era of efficiency-driven innovation, compared to the past decade was focused on B2C consumer companies and SaaS that was eating the world. In Europe we have a solid community of startups, France alone has 800 AI startups, and we have a huge research capability in Europe for early-stage deep tech; but when it comes to raising Series A, B funding, founders still have to go to global markets. “I founded my first company and sold it to an American company, which I’m very happy I did. But still I would have preferred the option of a European exit,” noted Tatiana Jama, Founding Partner, Sista Fund.
Even though AI is making incredible advances in process automation, with agentic models becoming increasingly sophisticated, there is no risk yet to replacing humans in the loop. At Ardian, Pauline Thomson, Head of Data Science and Managing Director – Infrastructure, said that LLM are key but “we also try to keep in mind it is very energy-intensive and costly. We need to use AI pragmatically. We’ve built our own applications internally within Ardian to retrieve text and information more easily, for example.”
It was noted that DeepSeek could impact AI/ML training campuses but less so the low latency space as relates to data centers. If DeepSeek leads to reduced compute demand, less capacity, that’s a good thing, in terms of future capacity. “We’re focused on the latency space. DeepSeek could potentially accelerate the inference phase of AI, taking it from the training phase into actual applications, which is going to accelerate the growth in the low latency space,” said Morgan Laughlin, Global Head Data Center Investments, PGIM Investment.
Europe may have the most talented engineers, globally, but it faces a talent gap compared to other parts of the world. As Jama noted: “India produces 1.5 million engineers every year, China 1.3 million engineers, … France, 37k engineers.” Europe should aim to get more talent from these countries and bring them to Europe with visa programs. The European Union should find a way to unite and forge more partnerships.
The significance of tackling ethical and safety concerns in AI deployment was noted, with participants encouraging the audience to engage in the forthcoming AI Action Summit to address open-source challenges and promote strategic partnerships within the EU.
“The big elephant in the room is not ethical AI it is AI safety,” said Bouee. The biggest challenge investors face today in AI is not allowing companies to scale until it is safe to do so.
During the re-industrialization panel, an audience poll revealed that 47% expect nearshoring and shorter, more sustainable supply chains to contribute to Europe’s sustainability objectives. 29% said promoting cleaner manufacturing processes would contribute.
The private wealth discussions shifted their focus to explore country-specific developments in Europe.
In France and Monaco, firms such as Group Crystal are acquiring lots of IFAs. “We do see a big push from the French government to increase their asset base in private equity, particularly with the retirement plans,” said Benjamin Brochet, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Crystal.
As demand picks up, this is likely to lead to the emergence of a secondary market and liquidity will develop. “Evergreen funds will bring liquidity, which will remove the barrier to making this private market bigger,” noted Pierre-Olivier Desplanches, Co-founder, Archinvest. This is still early days though. its very hard to sell a new team with no track record. “You need to demonstrate strong performance. Interestingly, smaller funds have better performance, so we don’t always just look at the large funds,” added Desplanches.
Brochet warned that advisors should pay attention to layering fees, feeder fees, distribution fees, etc. “These build up. It’s not enough to just look at gross IRR,” he said.
“My feedback to GPs is: work with the bankers and have clear reporting. The most important thing is that the GP needs to embody the fund,” stressed Agathe Laurent, Head of Private Equity Origination & Development, Natixis Wealth Management.
In Southern Europe, Alvaro Gonzalez Ruiz-Jarabo, Head of PE, Andbank, noted that evergreen funds are offering 20% liquidity per year. “It is an amazing opportunity for wealth investors looking to invest in traditionally illiquid asset classes,” he said.
In Italy, there could be north of $300 billion flowing into private markets. Evergreens would be an important stream through which this capital is deployed, “the second would be through insurance, and the third would be through SMAs. My advice to GPs is to prepare locally by setting up office locations,” explained Theo Delia Russell, Deputy Head Private Banking, Mediobanca.
In Spain, FCRs are important mechanisms through which Spain is attracting international capital inflows. “A second vehicle is an SCR which is a great option for family offices,” said Ruiz-Jarabo.
Regulation and taxation were cited as barriers for growth in wealth. Spain is talking about increasing certain taxes but it was hoped that the country does not go through with regime change.
In the DACH region, panellists explained that the reason for the slow pace of allocation to private markets compared to Asia Pacific or the Middle East is primarily because of risk appetite and cultural differences. “DACH investors are cost sensitive. More importantly, it is regulation on private clients, you need to be classified as a professional investor. It’s too strict,” said Viktoras Vatinas, Head of Private Market Investments, Julius Baer.
Maerki Baumann has built an evergreen platform, with no feeder funds. It is a one-stop solution
for all private market asset classes “because the clients were older and didn’t have the specialised knowledge to invest across private market asset classes,” explained Raphaela Schroder, Senior Investment Manager Private Markets, Maerki Baumann. “A closed ended fund would not appear attractive for older investors. Evergreens give an option to invest with a lower ticket and provide more liquidity. The most challenging part is educating the client.”
In the Benelux region, Hylke Hertoghs, Managing Partner, Marktlink Capital, believes there is plenty of scope for evolutionary growth in the Dutch market “but also a big portion of the market hasn’t invested at all. There is a long way to go but evergreen funds as well as increasing awareness and education will help,” he said.
In Belgium, the situation is more complicated because of the tax regulatory framework where returns have to be split in respect to interest versus capital gains. Luxembourg is in a unique position – and has been for decades – and enjoys a reputation as Europe’s hub for fund distribution. It is more about investing in funds out of Luxembourg, rather than vice-versa. “It is well known for banks and funds and it’s a big hotspot for family offices. There has been a tsunami of relocation of life insurance policies to Luxemburg due to geopolitical policy headwinds in neighbouring regions,” commented Raphael Eber, Partner and CEO, Stonehage Fleming.
As 2025 unfolds, macroeconomic stabilization is setting the stage for renewed liquidity and growth in private markets. Inflation remains muted, borrowing costs are lower, and IPO and M&A activity is picking up. LPs are pressing for increased distributions, which is expected to drive a surge in exits in the latter half of the year. Meanwhile, the democratization of private markets is accelerating, with a majority of industry participants anticipating it will reshape the landscape and fuel further expansion.
During the summit discussions, speakers explained that venture capital trends continue to be dominated by AI, capital efficiency, and transparency. AI applications are evolving rapidly, with European start-ups like Mistral AI in France are leading innovation but struggling with domestic funding gaps, relying on international investors. This could present future risks in terms of retaining AI leadership in the region.
Similarly, climate tech is booming in Europe, yet scale remains a challenge, prompting discussions around sovereign fund intervention.
Many late-stage unicorns, valued at over $3 trillion collectively, are positioned for exits as public markets recover. To navigate this evolving landscape, VCs must embrace disciplined investment strategies, maintain diversification, and plan liquidity from the outset.
Private equity is emerging as a key exit avenue, particularly in sectors like health tech and HR tech, where buy-and-build strategies are driving consolidation. At the same time, family offices and HNWIs are playing a bigger role in late-stage venture investing, making fund selection and access to top performers more crucial than ever.
The summit session highlighted that the next phase of VC success will depend on strategic risk-taking, liquidity planning, and investor access to top-performing funds.
And so wraps up another incredibly successful edition of IPEM Cannes | Wealth. What a pleasure bringing private markets and private wealth together. It was the perfect way to champion and to celebrate a true camaraderie as IPEM supports the wealth revolution!