🎥 MSCI's Luke Flemmer - "bringing clarity to investment decisions"

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today’s episode dives into how data and market structure are shaping private markets.

We sat down in MSCI’s New York office with Luke Flemmer, the Head of Private Assets at MSCI to discuss how standardization and normalization of data can help bring efficiency, transparency, and liquidity to private markets.

Luke brings a unique perspective to private markets. He was previously Managing Director, Head of Digital Strategy for Alternative Investments at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and was Co-Founder and CEO of Lab49, a global solutions provider of investment and risk technology to asset managers and investment banks.

When the ION Group acquired Lab49, Luke became Co-Head of ION’s Capital Markets Division, delivering software and solutions to the group’s global financial services customer base.

Earlier in his career, Luke worked in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. He is a CFA charterholder.

Luke and I had a fascinating conversation about private markets market structure and how MSCI is playing a role in driving standardization, normalization, and transparency of data in private markets. We covered:

* Parallels to market structure evolutions in equities, fixed income, FX, and derivatives.

* Tradeoffs of transparency for private markets participants.

* What it will take to build transparency and price formation in private markets.

* Where investors will still be able to find durable alpha.

* What standardization and normalization of data means for secondary markets.

* Analogies between Greek mythology and private markets.

* How secondaries has gone from a trade to a portfolio management tool.

* How index creation will impact private markets.

Thanks Luke for sharing your wisdom, expertise, and passion at the intersection of private markets and market structure.

Thanks for reading Alt Goes Mainstream! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work - writing and podcasting about the convergence of private markets and private wealth since December 2020.

A word from AGM podcast sponsor, Ultimus Fund Solutions

This episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus, the full-service fund administrator and transfer agent powering asset managers in private and public markets. As alts go mainstream, you need real expertise to handle complex fund structures, connect with key distribution partners, and handle sophisticated compliance, reporting, and transparency demands.

That’s Ultimus: high-tech, high-touch solutions for over 450 clients and 2,500 funds with $775B in assets under administration. Backed by an expert team of over 1,200 employees, they place client service at the core of their business, helping you navigate complexity during your fund structuring or launch and then supporting you through every stage of growth. Whether you’re already in the market or thinking about entering private wealth, you can trust their team’s deep expertise in retail alternatives to help you reach your goals.

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We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.

Show Notes

00:30 Welcome to the Alt Goes Mainstream Podcast

01:07 Sponsor Intro: Ultimus Fund Solutions

02:09 Meet MSCI’s Luke Flemmer

05:38 Wall Street Lessons: Fixed Income’s Electronification

07:00 From FX to Private Assets: The Data-Rich Value Chain

08:01 Harmonized Data → Liquidity

09:35 The Transparency Tradeoff: Who Wins, Who Loses?

11:42 What Efficiency Does to Private Market Spreads

13:49 Decomposing Private Equity Alpha: Manager Skill and Illiquidity

15:45 Building Blocks, Benchmarking and Total Portfolio

20:56 Parable of the Ship of Theseus: Should Private Markets Become Public Markets?

26:20 How LP Pressure Changed Reporting

26:57 Denominator Effect and the Push Toward Active LP Portfolio Management

28:05 Balancing Liquidity Across Public and Private

29:06 The Public/Private Blend Index: Why 85/15 Matters

30:08 Solving the “Stale Mark” Problem

31:18 Smoothing, Stickiness, and Forced Secondary Sales

32:34 What It Takes to Nowcast PE Daily: Marks and Public Market Correlations

33:51 Secondaries as a Pricing Flywheel: Faster Price Formation, Better Models

35:01 Lessons from Fixed Income NAVs

36:55 Building Trust in Private Benchmarks: Data Scale and Adoption Over Cycles

37:42 Unlocking the Wealth Channel (and 401(k)s): What Must Be True First

41:20 Advisor Pain Points: Liquidity Reality Checks and Factor Decomposition

42:57 Durable Alpha in Private Equity and Credit

44:50 Indexing Private Equity: Return Tracker, Replication, and the ETF Bridge

46:52 Standardizing the Language (Liquidity) and MSCI as the Market’s Connective Tissue

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

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