Thought Leadership

Last week, SMBC and Jefferies co-hosted a forum for senior executives from leading Japanese corporations and investment firms. The event built on Jefferies’ Sustainability and Transition team’s longstanding collaboration with Japanese leaders to unlock opportunities in the country’s climate investing and decarbonization journey.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of the rise of artificial intelligence for capital markets. The massive scale of current AI investments and the rapid pace of technological progress raise questions and increase stakes for nearly all investors, companies, and countries as they try to anticipate what the future holds.

Crafting a narrative is a medium that transcends the entertainment industry. While the shift from media executive to entrepreneur and investor is one with many parallels across roles, few have succeeded in leveraging both lenses as aptly as Jeffrey Katzenberg.

The venture capital ecosystem has undergone a structural shift. As venture-backed companies have opted to remain private for longer, distributions for fund limited partners (LPs) have become increasingly constrained. This liquidity bottleneck has prompted general partners (GPs) to explore alternative solutions – chief among them, GP-led secondary transactions.

Until recently, sponsors investing in real assets sectors were slower to adopt continuation vehicles to deliver liquidity for their limited partners. Things are different today: sponsors are increasingly tapping the secondary market not only to generate liquidity solutions for their energy, real estate, and infrastructure assets, but also to achieve their long-term strategic objectives.

Explore Ravi Mhatre’s insights on AI-driven growth and venture capital’s pivotal role. Discover how AI reshapes enterprise and innovation!

Both sponsors and strategics are eager to transact, and with the right conditions, many expect activity to pick up. The question is whether recent volatility will get in the way.

At Jefferies’ Private Growth Conference, sector leaders discussed the trajectory of AI adoption and how it’s shaping dealmaking in 2025.

We recently spoke with Evan Osheroff, Jefferies’ Managing Director of Software Investment Banking, to get his take on what’s shaping the technology market and where it’s headed.