iCapital Engage+ Toronto 2026 convened over 250 wealth managers to examine the role of alternatives in an increasingly fractured global economy. The agenda spanned geopolitics, the macroeconomic and investment implications, as well as the technology reshaping both portfolios and intelligence itself. Below, we outline the ten key takeaways:
1. PRIVATE MARKETS HAVE OUTGROWN THE WORD “ALTERNATIVE”
In a reflective fireside marking his final iCapital event, Head of International Marco Bizzozero traced how private markets assets have roughly tripled each decade, from around $1 trillion in 2000 to some $14 trillion today. Value creation has shifted from financial engineering to operational improvement, and since 2016 more capital has been raised privately than publicly. The label ‘alternative’, he argued, no longer fits, because the asset class has become a core component of diversified portfolios for institutional investors. Wes Sturdevant, Head of International Client Solutions Americas, framed the next phase of private markets as extending that core allocation to individual investors.
2. IN A FRACTURED WORLD, CAPITAL’S ORIGIN MATTERS AS MUCH AS ITS DESTINATION
Geopolitical strategist Abishur Prakash, also known as Mr. Geopolitics, argued that the integrated, US-led global economy many investors grew up with has given way to what he calls a fractured world, in which geopolitics increasingly precedes valuation. Capital, trade and technology are splintering along sovereign lines, he suggested, and de-Americanization is accelerating across payments, defense and data. The practical consequence for allocators is that the origin of capital now matters as much as its destination, since governments increasingly decide whose money and whose technology they will accept. In conversation with moderator Angie Lau, Prakash cast the shift as permanent rather than cyclical, yet also opportunity-rich, provided investors learn to read every position through a geopolitical lens first.
3. DIVERGENCE IS THE DEFINING MACRO FORCE OF 2026
iCapital’s Chief Investment Strategist, Sonali Basak, distilled the macro backdrop to a single word: divergence. She noted macro divergences have only deepened through the year across rates, growth, earnings and fiscal paths. Sonali pointed to private capital increasingly funding the reshoring that geopolitics now demands as a key beneficiary of this shifting dynamic. The transition from last year’s rate-cutting cycle to a rate-hold or hiking stance, she explained, reshapes where private credit and other fixed-income replacements belong in portfolios. Record deal inventory, she added, should keep feeding both the IPO recovery and the secondaries market over the medium-term.
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4. PRIVATE CREDIT FACES A SENTIMENT CYCLE, NOT A CREDIT CYCLE
Across several sessions, iCapital speakers and panelists framed this year’s private-credit turbulence as sentiment-driven rather than a product of fundamental weakness. Sonali Basak urged clients to separate the signal from the noise, arguing that it is “illogical to think that all software is going to zero.” Marco Bizzozero added proportion, noting that the roughly $2 trillion of headline-grabbing loans sits within a far larger, mostly institutional market, and that periodic liquidity limits are a feature of the product rather than a flaw. On the panel, speakers characterized recent redemptions as a stress test and a sentiment cycle, not a systemic event, with senior-secured spreads widening. Manager selection, they unanimously agreed, increasingly separates winners from losers.
5. PRIVATE EQUITY ALPHA NOW COMES FROM OPERATIONS
Moderating the private equity panel, iCapital Co-Founder and Head of Portfolio Management Nick Veronis returned to a familiar discipline, that “it’s really all about manager selection,” as the post-crisis tailwinds of cheap debt and multiple expansion fade. Panelists agreed that dispersion is widening and that operational improvement, sector expertise and disciplined underwriting now drive returns, with downside protection built through diversification. That sector expertise carried into software, where Vista Equity Partners’ David Breach challenged the concern that AI would hollow out the sector, calling it instead one of the most significant value creation opportunities in software’s history. He emphasized that established platforms with proprietary data and deep workflows are being amplified by AI, not displaced by it. The shift, speakers suggested, rewards operational capability and selectivity.
6. HEDGE FUNDS RETURN AS THE 60/40 DIVERSIFIER FALTERS
iCapital’s Jeffrey Brozek, Senior Vice President of Research and Education, outlined how the traditional 60/40 portfolio has lost its ballast, with stocks and bonds “very positively correlated” since the pandemic, rather than offsetting one another. That breakdown, he argued, is naturally pushing investors toward uncorrelated return streams, and hedge funds are a prime beneficiary. 2025 was the strongest year for industry inflows since the mid-2000s, with another $40+ billion gathered in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Panelists advocated for multi-manager and activist approaches built on disciplined risk management, positioning hedge funds less as a return enhancer and more as a provider of portfolio resilience.
7. INFRASTRUCTURE HAS BECOME A BET ON POWER
In a panel moderated by Mercer’s Christine Tessier, infrastructure was recast around the power demands of artificial intelligence. Speakers agreed that access to electricity, not capital, has become the binding constraint on data-centre growth, opening a picks-and-shovels opportunity across generation, storage and grid resilience. Hyperscalers, they noted, increasingly want global solutions providers that can secure power, land and regulatory approval at once, while the middle market finds an edge in smaller inference sites that connect to the grid faster. Panelists stressed the hallmarks that still define the asset class, contracted cash flows, providing exposure to essential services and inflation linkage, while flagging the ever-blurring line between infrastructure and private equity.
8. SECONDARIES HAVE BECOME AN ALL-WEATHER LIQUIDITY TOOL
Moderated by Jim Pittman, formerly global head of private equity at BCI, the secondaries panel charted the market’s shift from a distressed last resort to a core portfolio tool. Speakers noted that volumes roughly doubled to some $240 billion in 2025, but with only about 2% of private-equity assets changing hands through the secondary market each year, they argued that the opportunity for further growth remains substantial. Around 90% of activity, they said, is now active portfolio management rather than forced selling, and secondaries supplied close to a third of all LP distributions last year. Credit secondaries are following the same path from a very low base what is now a scaled and rapidly growing market, a theme Pantheon’s Hart Orenstein developed in his keynote on dislocation, dispersion and return opportunity.
9. iCAPITAL IS EXTENDING FROM ACCESS TO EXITS
iCapital’s Head of Capital Markets, Eileen Duff, set out why “secondary liquidity had to be part of our value proposition,” describing the firm’s minority investment in Tangible, a technology-enabled secondary adviser now integrated through single sign-on. The platform lets advisers run price discovery, model sell-versus-hold scenarios and auction individual positions to more than 200 vetted institutional buyers, for holdings as small as $50,000. It also gives capped funds a discreet release valve, without prices printing in the press. Duff previewed a lending initiative, expected to go live later this year, that will let clients borrow against private market positions, extending the platform from informed access toward informed, active management.
10. THE FUTURE OF INTELLIGENCE IS HUMAN AS MUCH AS ARTIFICIAL
The day closed with Hanson Robotics founder David Hanson and his humanoid robot Sophia in conversation with Angie Lau. Hanson argued that the next leap in AI will be biological in inspiration, pairing large models with embodied, bio-inspired design so that machines can learn and adapt as living systems do. Yet he was clear that human relationships differ fundamentally from human-AI ones, and that keeping people in the loop, designing and humanizing these systems, matters more as capability grows. Lau noted that the real opportunity ahead is not simply artificial intelligence, but authentic intelligence: how leaders preserve human judgment, trust and relationships as AI becomes more powerful. She also relayed a maxim she attributes to iCapital’s CEO Lawrence Calcano, that AI is culture, not merely technology. It was a fitting close to a day in which education, not product, was the recurring thread.
For more information on iCapital Engage+ Toronto, or to register your interest in future iCapital events, please contact [email protected].
