Stewardship best practices in private markets

Stewardship best practices in private markets

Private markets have structural advantages — concentrated ownership, direct access to management and long holding periods — that should make stewardship and engagement more effective than in public markets. Yet the practice remains comparatively informal and inconsistent across asset classes.

Enrico Colombo, Senior Director of Stewardship, sets out a practical, asset-class-specific approach to engagement across private equity, private credit, real estate, infrastructure and natural capital — and introduces a framework to organise and track it.

Key takeaways

• Engagement is a value-creation and risk-mitigation tool. Purposeful, two-way dialogue on material risks and opportunities helps strengthen operations, improve stakeholder relations and de-risk refinancing and exits across the investment lifecycle.
• Private markets’ structural features make engagement powerful. Concentrated ownership, direct management access and long holding periods give investors real influence.
• There is no single playbook. Different asset classes require different engagement tools. Five real-world case studies show how practices must adapt to specific asset classes and outcomes.
• A framework to organise and track engagement. Nuveen’s proprietary TAI framework helps investors gauge: Transparency, Accountability and Impact.

Topics include

• Perspectives on the multi-faceted stakeholder ecosystems of private markets
• Practical, outcome-focused examples for designing engagement activities
• A guiding framework for driving a coherent engagement programme across the main private market asset classes
• Five case studies: natural capital, European private credit, U.S. private credit, real estate and clean energy infrastructure

These insights will help guide asset owners, investment managers and stewardship and responsible investing professionals who are looking to build rigorous, asset-class-appropriate engagement programmes in private markets.