Mathieu Chabran on Bloomberg TV Singapore

Certainly not. Good morning, Paul. Thanks for having us. You know, just filtering through what Anthony, you know, just said, you know, speaking about the market and you see that the big AI theme that has been very present for some months now, rightly so. You know, remember when we last spoke, Paul, you know, we were talking about the potential misallocation of capital. That was maybe six months ago. Interest rates were not, you know, where they were, and we see that now, you know, there is some kind of a reckoning moment, you know, and facing the reality in terms of what is the real cost of liquidity, cost of funding, and that will not spur AI, right? So we know that there are some zillions being raised right now, you know, tens of zillions being deployed.

And the very reasons, you know, the very fact that we're seeing now some of these big players, you know, having a lot of, taking a lot of debt, you know, on the book. We all know that it's better to take debt, you know, when it's cheap, not to say free as it was, you know, a few years ago, than when your risk-free rate is at five plus. And so we're now entering in this moment where many of these mega trends, and AI being, you know, one of them, will have to effectively deliver and ensure that there will be the proper return on capital employed, you know, for anyone, you know, willing to gather some capital on this theme.

Yes, that's probably true, Paul. You know, on the public market, because we know and there's been, you know, many talks about the concentration of the value, you know, in the public equity indices. Now, we're seeing, you know, part of the bond market, you know, capturing part of this demand. But, you know, we at Tikehau Capital, as you know, we're trying to focus on this part of the market that is maybe in the blind spot of where the public market can provide this liquidity and generate this capital formation. And I really believe that private markets today are one of the keys to portfolio diversification for any asset owners, any asset allocator. You know, I'm here in Singapore this week and, you know, touring Asia for two weeks, meeting with our investors, meeting with our partners, our shareholders, and that's a theme that keeps, you know, coming back. I mean, first of all, is the geographical diversification. I mean, we know that the world has changed over the past 18 months. We know that there is a deglobalization taking place, some reshoring taking place. I see a lot of flows effectively coming back, investing more domestically in many parts of the world, but specifically here in Asia. And you've got, you know, all these big trends. You know, digitalization is one, defense. You know, how come, you know, we cannot talk about defense, decarbonization, this energy transition, which remains, you know, one of the key themes on the back of the war. And, you know, we're back with the oil at 100 bucks, right? And people were hoping over the past few months that there will be, you know, a bit more softening, you know, in oil price. So we see that all these big themes together with this deglobalization, and you add to that, you know, this secret sauce, if I may say, interest rates at five plus. I think it's a great moment for asset owners, portfolio managers to rethink, you know, this diversification, and there is a great deal of diversification that can come from this private market allocation.