🎥 Bloomberg's Brad Foster - driving the convergence between public and private markets

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

01:45 Welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream Podcast

04:29 Brad Foster’s Background

05:28 Client Empathy Product

07:13 Fixed Income Lessons

08:48 Efficiency and Electronification

10:00 Credit Spectrum Converges

11:58 Why Borrowers Go Private

13:37 Foundational Data Plumbing

15:07 Asset Owners Portfolio View

16:53 Transparency Versus Alpha

19:43 Market Structure Endgame

21:15 Bloomberg Terminal Workflow

23:35 Bought Not Sold

24:54 Secondary Markets Rise

25:46 Desktop Real Estate

28:24 Chat For Deal Flow

29:25 Build Buy Partner

32:05 Daphne Workflow Fix

33:09 Master Data Matters

34:58 Need Industry Taxonomy

36:09 Standardizing Valuations

38:54 Transparency And Liquidity

42:01 Portfolio Risk Tools

44:25 Agree On Definitions

46:11 Scaling For Growth

47:42 Closing Thoughts

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

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