The demise of daily commutes didn’t dent appetites for private markets podcasts.

PEI Media’s Spotlight podcast series was downloaded more than 56,000 times this year, roughly double 2019’s total. Discussions ranged from the pandemic to diversity to when and how to build an in-house IR team, among others.

Here’s a list of this year’s most-downloaded episodes.

How covid-19 is hitting private markets

This year’s most-downloaded podcast was published during an unprecedented week for the world and financial markets back in March. Senior editors across PEI Media titles from Private Equity International, Private Debt Investor, PERE, Infrastructure Investor and Secondaries Investor examined the ways the novel coronavirus had impacted their respective markets.

LP defaults, force majeure and over-collateralisation amid covid-19

Less than a month later, PEI Media’s senior editors reconvened to discuss the spectre of LP defaults, how they might play out and what this could mean for GPs and their subscription credit lines. We delved into the rise of digital infrastructure funds and how they experienced a boom as covid-19 forced more than half the world’s population to work from home.

The episode also examined the private debt collateralised loan obligation market, the impact of tenants defaulting on rent payments and what that meant for private real estate funds.

Which private asset classes are experiencing a boom in dealflow?

This April episode toured Asia, North America and Europe to get the lowdown on how the coronavirus crisis was affecting the healthcare markets, agri investing and venture capital to find out the bright spots for investment opportunities.

Three months of lockdown – how are LPs and GPs adapting?

In June, Spotlight discussed the results of two PEI surveys: Investor outlook on 2020 in light of covid-19 and a corresponding GP version. These reports – both conducted in May – showed how LP and GP sentiment towards private equity had evolved since the beginning of the health crisis. We discussed how working from home did not appear to be restricting investors from making fund commitments, why LPs were being more flexible about their managers’ investment mandates and why the denominator effect hadn’t spurred large secondaries sales.

Why the future of private real estate is digital

In this May episode by sister title PERE, Jeffrey Kanne, chief executive of National Real Estate Advisors, and Marc Ganzi, CEO of Digital Colony, discussed why digital real estate is a growing point of interest for institutional investors.