Bloomberg's Brad Foster - driving the convergence between public and private markets
Alt Goes Mainstream: The Latest on Alternative Investments, WealthTech, & Private Markets
Transparency tensions in privates
Brad discusses which parts of private markets remain intentionally opaque and where transparency will increase with retail access.
Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.
Today’s episode takes us to a hub of market structure, a powerhouse of trading, and a crossroads of public and private markets to discuss how private markets are in the midst of a market structure evolution.
We sat down at Bloomberg’s NYC headquarters with Bloomberg’s Head of Fixed Income & Private Markets Brad Foster to discuss how technology and data are driving a convergence between public and private markets, particularly as it relates to the credit space.
Brad is the Head of Fixed Income & Private Markets at Bloomberg, where he’s focused on delivering the data, analytics, and tools clients need to power public and private market investment strategies and workflows. Brad joined Bloomberg in June 2017 to lead its Enterprise Data Content business as well as its Fixed Income Evaluated Pricing (BVAL) offering. He was appointed Head of Fixed Income, including Securitized Products, in early 2023 and Head of Fixed Income & Private Markets in early 2024. Prior to joining Bloomberg, Brad spent almost 20 years on the sell-side in multiple locations, including London, Tokyo, and New York, for Deutsche Bank as a Managing Director in Global Markets across Global Finance, Fixed Income & Currencies, Structured Finance, Special Situations, Structured Lending and Front Office Risk Management, including CVA and Counterparty Risk, where he managed a team that built a Cross-Product Risk and Portfolio Margining Platform. Prior to Deutsche Bank, he was at Credit Suisse in the Market Risk Management Group.
Brad and I had a fascinating conversation about public and private credit and how data and technology are shaping these markets. We covered:
- How Bloomberg’s history shaping other market structures are informing how private markets market structure is evolving.
- How public and private credit are converging.
- Definitions and perspectives on liquidity vs illiquidity, what’s risky and what’s not risky.
- What private markets needs from a market infrastructure perspective to scale.
- Why borrowers are choosing private credit and the investment grade private credit option.
- How Bloomberg is approaching private credit and private markets market structure.
- Bloomberg’s build vs. buy vs. partner strategy with private markets tech.
Thanks Brad for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion at the intersection of credit, market structure, and financial technology.
Show Notes
00:00 Scaling Private Markets
01:12 Welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream Podcast
02:13 Brad Foster’s Background
04:31 From Trading to Bloomberg
05:27 Client Empathy Product Mindset
06:25 Fixed Income as Blueprint
07:11 Bloomberg Shaping Market Structure
08:19 Electronification Turning Points
09:10 Efficiency and Regulation Drivers
09:45 Blurring Public and Private Credit
10:34 Three Legs of Credit
11:43 Why Borrowers Go Private
13:09 Missing Data and Workflow
13:57 Security Master Foundations
16:12 Transparency and Retail Pressure
22:07 Private Deal Data Uploads
22:29 Same Analytics for Private
22:50 Sold Not Bought Debate
23:43 When Private Gets Liquid
24:38 Desktop Real Estate Idea
26:21 Reimagining Terminal with AI
27:21 Chat as Market Connector
28:19 Build Buy Partner Strategy
28:51 Bloomberg Private Track Record
30:09 Daphne Investment Rationale
30:58 Fixing GP LP Workflow
32:01 Most Valuable Data Masters
33:45 Taxonomy as Missing Piece
34:49 Standardizing Valuation Methods
35:29 Extending Evaluated Pricing
37:27 Liquidity Versus Illiquidity
40:18 Portfolio Risk for Asset Owners
44:16 Foundations to Scale Privates
Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.
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