The writer is chair of Rockefeller International
If a bubble is a good idea gone too far, the $10tn global market for private investing in everything from debt to companies to real estate may be one.
The rage for private investing began in the early 2000s, after the success of the Yale University endowment fund led by David Swensen, who embraced private investments to diversify away from stock and bond markets and stabilise returns in the long run. Swensen’s definition of “long” was decades — not a mere ten years, much less the next turn from bear to bull market. He looked for private managers who were building companies rather than stripping and flipping for a quick profit. Swensen defined his job as generating multigenerational wealth to support Yale, which he assumed to be “immortal”. But his approach also had the potential to free money managers from daily pressure in the markets, and transcend the short-term thinking that was infecting modern capitalism.