Citywire Private Markets, Madrid 2026

Should investors start with secondaries? By buying interests in existing funds or portfolios, investors gain exposure to more seasoned assets, often with greater visibility on underlying company performance and a shorter "J-curve" compared with primaries. However, the space can be complex, with investors needing to understand a whole new world of valuations, manager selection and concentration risk

Dawson Partners is a global alternative asset manager focused on providing innovative structured solutions to the private markets. Founded in 2015, the Firm takes a differentiated approach to selecting, curating, structuring, and managing bespoke portfolios to serve the demands of a growing market. Our Fund seeks to provide compelling risk adjusted returns and consistent yield on highly diversified and curated private equity portfolios through structures that can benefit from strong asset coverage, a liquidation preference and upside sharing. We’ll discuss why we believe private markets provide a differentiated way to invest – particularly as the market landscape evolves and new opportunities emerge.

Workshop Objective: Explore the role of PE secondaries in private wealth portfolios and how Dawson’s innovative approach provides a differentiated allocation that can complement or substitute traditional private credit exposure.

Company Profile: Dawson Partners is a global alternative asset manager focused on providing innovative structured solutions to the private markets. Founded in 2015, the Firm takes a differentiated approach to selecting, curating, structuring, and managing bespoke portfolios to serve the demands of a growing market. Dawson has over US$25 billion of assets under management and has deployed over US$30 billion across more than 300 transactions. The Firm has over 250 employees and offices in Toronto, London, New York, and Hong Kong.

Private markets are becoming a key part of diversified portfolios, driven by the search for returns, diversification, and differentiated income streams. This roundtable will open with a discussion on why private markets are increasingly relevant and how wealth managers in the region are incorporating alternatives into clients’ portfolios.

Deborah Eggler will share views on the current private markets landscape, the role of alternatives, and the practical challenges of implementation. The discussion will then focus on access, execution, and scalability, where traditional processes can create friction.

The session will also explore how platforms like iCapital can help streamline access, implementation, and management of private market investments, enabling wealth managers to build and scale portfolios more efficiently.

Workshop Objectives: To explore why private markets matter, how wealth managers are allocating alternatives in portfolios today, and how technology-enabled platforms like iCapital support scalable access, implementation, and ongoing management.

Company Profile: iCapital is a global leader shaping the future of investing for financial advisors, wealth managers, asset managers, and other industry participants. Through its end to end platform, iCapital provides a comprehensive solution to access, manage, and integrate non traditional investments across iCapital Marketplace, Enterprise Solutions, and Data Intelligence. The platform supports the full investment lifecycle, making it easier to learn about, buy, manage, and report on alternative assets, structured investments, and annuities at scale.

Backed by strategic investment from leading asset managers, wealth managers, and service providers, iCapital combines advanced technology, data connectivity, education, and research to drive better outcomes. As of April, 2026, iCapital services over $315B in platform assets globally and supports over 2500 funds. Headquartered in New York, iCapital operates globally with major hubs across Europe, Asia, and North America.

In this session, Olivier Raybaud — Co-Founder and Managing Director of SWEN Blue Ocean — will share how SWEN built the largest direct impact venture capital fund of its kind dedicated to regenerating ocean biodiversity: a market still largely overlooked by private capital, despite the ocean's central role in sustaining life on Earth.
Building on the inaugural €170m SWEN Blue Ocean fund, Olivier will present SWEN Blue Ocean 2, the second vintage of the strategy targeting €300m, which scales a demonstrated investment model focused on companies addressing the three major pressures facing the ocean: overexploitation, pollution and climate change. The strategy aims to combine measurable systemic impact with competitive venture capital returns.
 
Workshop objectives:
•    Understand why ocean regeneration is a large, fast-growing and still under-allocated market — and the structural forces that make it scalable
•    Explore where value is created and captured, from Series A entry points to realistic exit routes, drawing on the first vintage's track record
•    Consider how exposure to a specialist, first-mover team — and to the largest fund in its category — can bring genuine diversification to an impact or private-markets allocation