ICG plc (ICG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and thank you for joining ICG's results presentation for the 6 months ending 30th of September 2024. As a reminder, unless stated otherwise, all financial information discussed today is based on alternative performance measures, which exclude the consolidation of some of our fund structures required under IFRS. I'm joined by our CEO and CIO, Benoît Durteste; and our CFO, David Bicarregui, who will give an overview of our performance during the period, and we'll then take questions. The slides, along with the accompanying results announcement, are available on our website. You can submit questions through the webcast messaging function or by telephone. Details are on the online portal. And at this point, I will hand over to Benoît.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, everyone. Today, we are reporting results that bucked the trend of what remains a challenging environment for private markets: near-record fundraising, total AUM has reached $106 billion; increasing transaction activity; higher client numbers, now close to 750; and growth across almost key financial metrics with, of note, management fee income up 23% year-on-year. In the first half, we have reinforced leading positions in our flagship strategies of European direct lending and GP-led secondaries. We have also significantly progressed a number of scaling strategies, including North American Credit Partners III, Europe Mid-Market II and Europe Infrastructure II. Looking ahead, Europe IX is receiving strong interest from clients, and we are now expecting to have a first close before the end of this financial year. Three key factors drive, I believe, this performance. One, the breadth of our product offering. Diversification does make a difference. Two, our strong deeply ingrained investment culture reflected in our track record. We are clearly recognized in the market as uncompromising on investment discipline and quality and not as a volume player or asset gatherer. And three, bifurcation of the private market. ICG belongs to a relatively small group of managers capturing a disproportionate and increasing share of investor capital allocations. From a shareholder perspective, this is resulting in a growing business that is yet more diversified, more profitable with lower capital intensity and is strategically positioned to be one of the few globally relevant, scaled private market managers as the industry continues to evolve and consolidate in the coming years. ICG's favorable competitive position is exemplified in what is perhaps the most high-profile event of H1 for us: the final close for the SDP V strategy direct lending, which, at just under $17 billion, represents the largest-ever European direct lending fund raise. Today, we manage Europe's leading senior direct lending platform. This level of incumbency and scale takes time. We started Senior Debt Partners in 2012, financing companies at the time with an average net debt of less than EUR 100 million. Roll forward 12 years, we have completed more than 180 transactions, deployed EUR 26 billion of capital and generated a gross IRR of just under 9%. And we are now financing companies with an average net debt close to EUR 0.5 billion. Crucially, from an investment perspective, as the strategy has grown, we have invested at stable pricing and risk metrics while financing bigger and better businesses. Our origination platform, brand and discipline, along with the underlying growth of the market opportunity, has enabled us to maintain our client returns with an improved risk profile and well-increasing AUM. From a shareholder perspective, in the last 5 years, we have increased management fees for the strategy by over 2.25x. Taken in isolation, building in a decade the leading European direct lending business is in itself an accomplishment and certainly a source of significant value creation. In the context of the group, interestingly, as a percentage of our total management fees, SDP has remained basically flat, which is a testament to how we have grown other strategies and diversified our fee streams at the same time as building from scratch this leading strategy. That breadth demonstrates its value as we go through cycles. Different strategies appeal to clients at different times, and different investment opportunity sets present themselves depending on the economic landscape and competitive environment. Today, sentiment around private market has materially improved compared to even 6 months ago. Debt markets are exuberant, interest rates are off their peak, and there is building pressure on many managers to realize assets and return capital to investors, which should drive a recovery in buyout deal flow. However, we continue to observe a disconnect between this perception and the reality on the ground, which the charts on this page made clear, I think. Looking at global private equity deployment and realizations over the last 12 months compared to the annual averages of 2020 to '23, you could see the last 12 months are running lower, in particular, realizations down over 25%. This is the DPI predicament that mostly the private equity managers are finding themselves in low levels of distributions to LPs, which in turn is a limiting factor on overall fundraising for the sector. As a matter of fact, total fundraising volumes are down again in 2024. They have been coming down every year since 2021. And more strikingly, the number of funds holding a final close is expected to be down 8% to 10% from last year, which would translate into a 70% drop, that's 7-0, compared to the 2021 peak. ICG's performance, however, is bucking this trend. Our deployment and realization figures are up in the last 12 months compared to the average of previous years. Part of this is our waterfront of products, debt strategies and liquidity solutions such as secondaries have seen higher levels of transaction activity recently. The other part of the explanation is our investment philosophy, unchanged for decades, with a focus on risk return, not just return on investment performance, of course, and in particular, because it is essential for consistency of performance on cash returns on realizations. Always important, but especially valued these days by LPs. And on this slide, we set out 5 strategies, both flagship and scaling, showing the relative performance versus the industry for IRR on the top row and DPI on the bottom row. Our investors, our LPs are well aware of these metrics, and this is a critical differentiating factor, particularly in the current market and fundraising environment. Our franchise is built on excellent investment performance across a broadening waterfront of products, which makes our business more relevant to clients, more scaled and more diversified, and you see that here. This is important. This is the long-term foundation for ICG's continued success. And the fact that we can lead with this track record means we are exceptionally well positioned as we look forward to our next $100 billion of AUM. Now turning to our results. AUM of $106 billion, fee-earning AUM of $73 billion, AUM not yet earning fees of $19 billion. Our AUM metrics are growing strongly. And this is reflected in our management fees and our Fund Management Company PBT, both up over 20% year-on-year. And David will walk you through these numbers in detail in a moment. From a corporate perspective, we published our Sustainability and People Report over the summer, marking decades since we established our responsible investing policy and became a signatory to the PRI. The report gives some rich insight on our activities last year and our areas of focus for the future. It's well worth a read. And finally, amongst the hires we have made this half as we continue to strengthen the platform was a new Global Head of Marketing and Client Relations, Alan Isenberg, who is based in New York. Alan is replacing Andreas Mondovits, who, after 12 years at ICG building our MCR team and being integral to our growth, is stepping back and will take a senior advisory position focusing on our Asian expansion. You'll have the opportunity to hear from Alan in the coming quarters. It's an exciting new chapter, not least because I believe we have significant runway to grow our fundraising capability in the Americas. So a strong period financially and strategically. Looking in more detail at the transaction activity over the period, which has increased in aggregate, but that increase is not universal across all strategies and in all geographies. For instance, we saw strong deployment in structured capital and private equity, largely driven by European corporate, which is focused on nonsponsored transactions and, therefore, not correlated to the sluggish private equity market, and by Strategic Equity, which is a clear beneficiary of the current environment as an attractive alternative for GPs to both create liquidity for their investors and deploy their capital. By contrast, Private Debt deployment remains lower than recent periods, for one thing because it is partially dependent on buy-up market activity levels and also because, as I have pointed out in prior presentations, this asset class is somewhat countercyclical. When debt markets are closed, you have no realizations, and any new investment is a net positive. When that markets reopen as they have, you have to contend with a wave of realization, which is good for your DPI numbers, but in terms of fee-earning AUM, you need significant deal flow just to compensate. It's important to note in that context that the strategy, direct lending, has returned to positive net deployment in Q2. And we have announced a number of realizations from infrastructure in recent quarters, which, as you saw earlier, puts that strategy in the top decile from both a return and DPI perspective. This has added more momentum to the fundraise for European Infrastructure II, which will close in June 2025. So here again, we see the tangible strategic benefits in our breadth of products at scale. And this is also visible in fundraising, which was very strong in the period. Indeed, it was our second highest-ever 6-month period. Direct lending was the largest absolute contributor, which is not a surprise going into a final close. Strategic Equity V and Europe Mid-Market II continue to raise strongly, with the commingled fund for SE V now at over $5 billion and Mid-Market II at circa EUR 2 billion. Both are already larger than their prior vintages, and both will have a final close by the end of this fiscal year. I mentioned European Infrastructure II on the previous slide. And you can see we have raised over $700 million in the period, twice as much as it raised in the entire of full year '24. The strategy is clearly gaining momentum on the back of strong performance metrics. Our U.S. mezzanine strategy closed its third vintage in the period at $1.9 billion. That's 50% larger than the previous vintage. So in a fundraising environment where it is said that flat is the new up, for ICG, thus far, up remains the new up. We even grew our number of clients by over 60 in the last 6 months and now stands at nearly 750. Worth noting, the Americas were our single largest source of capital in the half, an area of focus for a number of years and the geography with still the most significant fundraising potential for us. Looking forward, we have, as always -- quite a lot on. Fundraising is, by essence, lumpy, driven by which strategies we have in the market. And this fiscal year is likely to be at the higher end, which would naturally be balanced by a lower fundraising year next financial year. One, of course, should not annualize the $10 billion we've achieved in the first 6 months. Still, this year is shaping up very well and certainly reinforces our confidence in the medium-term fundraising guidance we set out at the full year. Looking ahead, I remain convinced that our unwavering focus on and reputation for investment performance is the key to a long-term success in scaling up and scaling out. The benefits of that focus are visible in the results we are reporting today. This cycle is leading to an increased dispersion in the prospects of managers, and ICG is clearly one of the beneficiaries. That is a positive for our clients, our employees and, of course, our shareholders. When activity levels do reaccelerate more broadly, our strategic positioning, client franchise and brand equity will have been enhanced and should enable us to outperform the wider market in that growth resurgence. And with that, I will pass to David to talk, in more detail, about our financial results.

Thank you, Benoît, and thank you all for joining us today. I am pleased to report that we have published strong results this morning, with growth across key financial metrics: fee-earning AUM up 4% in the period, last 12 months' management fees up 10% compared to FY '24, last 12 months' Fund Management Company PBT up 9% against FY '24 and NAV share of 788p. So starting with fee-earning AUM, which, during the period, grew 4% to end at $73 billion and, over the last 5 years, has grown at an annualized rate of 15%. Since March, we have raised $2.9 billion for strategies that charge fees on committed capital and deployed $4.1 billion in strategies that charge fees on invested capital. In addition, we have $19 billion of AUM not yet earning fees, up from $16 billion at March. So fee-eligible AUM grew by 19% in the last 6 months. Our AUM not yet earning fees give significant visibility on future management fees linked to our pace of deployment, largely in Private Debt. Our management fees grew 23% year-on-year or 11% excluding catch-up fees, which, this period, was GBP 27 million. Last 12 months' management fees are up 10% compared to FY '24 and now stand at GBP 558 million for the 12 months to September. Performance fees of GBP 32 million are in line with our medium-term guidance of being 10% to 15% of total fee income and, this period, were driven by Europe VII and the inaugural recognition for Europe Mid-Market I. During the period, we received GBP 40 million cash proceeds from realized performance fees. The balance sheet investment portfolio generated NIR of GBP 48 million in the period, representing an annualized return of 3%. This included interest of GBP 67 million and a capital reduction of GBP 20 million. Over the last 12 months, NIR has been 9%, and the average over the last 5 years is 11%. So a strong long-term track record of value creation. During the last 6 months, all asset classes, except credit, generated positive NIR, although limited write-ups in fund valuations resulted in lower returns than recent periods. Within credit, we have not made any changes to our modeling assumptions for CLOs, and the default rates we are observing remain below those assumptions. From a cash perspective, the balance sheet deployed GBP 266 million alongside our funds, GBP 104 million in seed investments and received GBP 436 million in realizations. So balance sheet investment activity generated net cash of GBP 66 million, and the balance sheet investment portfolio closed the period at a value of just under GBP 3 billion. Shifting to operating expenses, which, at a group level, were up 8% year-on-year. Over the long term, group OpEx has grown at 13% CAGR over the last 5 years, materially lower than the management fee growth of 20% CAGR over the same period. The Fund Management Company cost base grew 19% year-on-year and 10% compared to the second half of FY '24. As a result, the Fund Management Company reported PBT of GBP 196 million for the period, up 21% year-on-year, with a Fund Management Company PBT margin of 55.3%. Over the last 12 months, fund management PBT of GBP 408 million, up 9% compared to FY '24. Alongside the strong earnings we are reporting, our balance sheet remains a valuable asset and a strategic asset. It is well capitalized with net gearing of 0.35x, down from 0.38x at March 2024, and an attractive term debt profile alongside substantial available liquidity. During the period, Fitch upgraded our credit outlook from stable to positive, and we repaid GBP 223 million of debt that matured. And we recently extended our GBP 550 million revolving credit facility, which now matures in October 2027. At the end of September, we had shareholder equity of GBP 2.3 billion, equivalent to 788p per share. So to wrap up, we are pleased to report continued profitable growth across all key metrics. ICG's positioning within our industry and our investment track record and client franchise come together to translate into very attractive financial performance over the short and long term. Looking ahead, we are confirming our medium-term financial guidance, and we are excited about what the future holds. With that, I'll turn it back to Chris, and we look forward to taking your questions.

Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] And while we wait for a couple of questions on the phone, a couple of written questions have been submitted. Firstly, Europe IX, that sounds positive. Is there any further comments you'd like to make in terms of timing or sizing of Europe IX? Benoît?

There are plenty of comments I would like to make, but I cannot make them. So I think I'll give it a little bit of background is the forthcoming Europe IX, the timing of it and, to a large extent, the sizing of it very much depends on what we have done with the existing Europe VIII. The positive news there is, as you have actually seen in the numbers today, this European corporate strategy has seen an upsurge in deployment in the past 12 months, 12, 18 months, very meaningful, which by the way, there might be questions on that, some overreaction. But part of that explains why you see a lower NIR growth for these strategies because as you deploy more, you don't move the value of new transactions on the balance sheet. I mean they stay at constant NAV for a year or so. So that has a technical impact on a flattening NIR. But anyway, I think it's a technical point. But we've seen a real increase in deployment activity. And just to give you an idea, in total, just for the European corporate strategy and actually just for the large cap, we've deployed more than EUR 6 billion. If I include the mid-cap, it's over EUR 7 billion, which is, by far, a record in our entire history of deployment. Part of that went into -- for co-investment to our LPs, which is a significant advantage. The -- our LPs quite like co-investment, and the rest went into the funds and some on the balance sheet. So strong deployment, that's -- it's a very positive way to approach a new fundraise. That's sending a very good signal. The performance of that fund, and you've seen some of the numbers here as well, is exceptional. Not sure how obvious that is. But this is one of the -- in its asset class, it's the best-performing fund globally, which is why we have quite a following from LPs. So it's -- touch wood, and things are not closed until they're closed, but we're approaching this fundraise, I think, in the best possible position, both in terms of deployment and performance of the existing vintages. In DPI, because we've returned very significant -- we've returned more than 3 billion on this strategy to LPs in the past 12 months again. So DPI numbers are also incredibly strong. We're top decile there as well. So yes, it's looking good, but it's fundraising. Things can always slip by a quarter. These things are -- they are a bit fluid. Yes, we're in a good position. I'd be -- just putting it differently, I'd be extremely disappointed if the next vintage wasn't larger than the current one. And sorry, there was a -- part of the question was on timing. I think I mentioned it in my presentation. We've brought this forward because the deployment has been so strong and because we seem to be creating interest among the -- our LP base. We've brought this forward. And so now we have very strong visibility that we'll have a first close by the end of this financial year, which -- just to make it clear for everyone, that's good for the fundraising numbers for this year. It does nothing to the bottom line because, of course, you only trigger the fees from that point on. So you only really see the benefit of that going into the next financial year.

Absolutely. On cost base, David, one for you. This looks good on a group level. Any guidance you can give for FY '25, both on a group and also from an FMC OpEx perspective?

Yes, we don't give sort of specific in-year cost guidance as you know. But what I'd point you towards is some of the statements we made at the full year results. We talked about bringing down the rate of growth of cost, which we are doing, and you can see that in some of the numbers today. We talked about our sort of long-term average for FMC expenses being closer to 12%. I think you can expect to see more of that as we progress through the financial year.

Maybe if I can add something. I think that's something we've pointed to before. On the cost base, one of the drivers pushing up the cost base is the investment we've been making, and that we -- to a lesser extent, but that we keep on making on the marketing front. You've seen in the numbers, our experience and our performance on fundraising is not representative at all of what's happening in the broader market. I think I hope that's clear. The broader market fundraising is quite harsh. The fact that we're performing this way, one, is testimony to the quality of our strategies. But obviously, you need a strong marketing team. And as we feel that essentially, we're gaining market share, that's what's happening in this current market environment, we want to push that advantage. And so we are investing, and we keep on investing in our marketing team because there's quite a bit of white space. I mentioned the Americas. We don't have direct presence, for instance, in Latin America. That's something we're seriously considering. We've just opened an office in Canada in the last 6 months, actually -- or it's 12 months maybe because there's -- again, we have significant -- we have a number of LPs in Canada, but there is much more we can go for. So we're still investing there on the back of the fact that we're having a successful period.

Thank you. And one more from the written questions before turning to the phone. David, any thoughts on how we should think about FY '25 late management fees or catch-up fees as we refer to them? Probably specifically on Strategic Equity V and Mid-Market II are probably the key drivers there. Anything you'd like to give on quantities there or not really?

A couple of things maybe just to observe. I mean as we said in our prepared remarks in the presentation, we had GBP 27 million of catch-up fees within this period, and you can see that disclosed in the RNS. Obviously, we don't know exactly what we will raise in the remaining part of Strategic Equity V or Mid-Market II. As Benoît said, we have a lot of positive momentum behind those, and so they will feature as part of the full year. The best way to bound that potentially is to think about $1 billion of Strategic Equity V generating something like GBP 20 million of total fees, of which half is catch-up and half is in-year fee. So that's how I would sort of try and bound the potential management fee creation from being in the market longer with those strategies.

Thank you. Turning to the phone now, and we'll start with Oliver Carruthers at Goldman Sachs.

I've got 3 questions. So the first question, I realize this is very small in the context of ICG, but should we expect any further negative noncash mark to fair value impacts in 2H '25 to the credit NIR if you launch further CLOs into a market where spreads are very tight? So that's the first question. Second question, I realize it's very early, but I'm curious on how you think the Trump administration has the potential to impact the alts industry, both from a macro perspective in terms of deal activity and confidence from capital allocators, but also anything from a regulatory perspective that you're paying attention to? And then the third question, we've recently seen some of your peers strike an incrementally more constructive tone on the prospect for real estate fundraising, albeit from a low base. What are you seeing here? And can you frame this and the opportunity that you see to scale your franchise?

Thank you. Why don't we take them in the order you've given, David -- Oli? David, why don't you take the credits question, and then Benoît, maybe on Trump and real estate?

Yes. So Oli, I mean you can see in the numbers, and we've talked about it in the prepared remarks, the feature of the credit business is that we're creating CLOs and then we're doing a day 1 mark to model on the creation of those CLOs. We believe our model is very conservative. And actually, if you look at what's happening in practice, we're not seeing default rates anywhere close to where they're being modeled. So you do see this day 1 effect in the numbers. The other thing is we're in the business for the long term. If you look at the CLO business sort of more holistically, we're generating dividends and management fees from being in the CLO business. It's not just about one NIR line item. And we're not managing this over a 6-month period of time. This is performance over time, not within a 6-month period.

Yes, I think that's right. And I think importantly, on this, we are not seeing any deterioration in the quality of credit, whether in the U.S. or in Europe or not at all. If anything, we're seeing improvement. So what you've seen in the NIR is essentially, as David has explained, it's mostly technical. I think it's worth mentioning as well, may sound counterintuitive, we've taken advantage of the fact that the debt markets have bounced back so much to derisk -- for lack of a better word, to derisk, particularly our U.S. portfolios. So we've taken advantage of that all the markets have gone up to take out some -- in our views, the weaker assets. Now that has an immediate negative impact, but actually, long term, on the equity value, which will be reflected in our balance sheet at some point, that will be a positive. So that's a conscious decision we've made to take advantage of the market environment to essentially rebalance the -- mostly our U.S. CLOs towards a lower-risk profile. So that's a conscious decision to take advantage of what we view as an interesting market window. On Trump, well, that's a difficult one. I think pretty much everybody is struggling to try to read what the impact of Trump will be on any given countries, economy or on geopolitics. Listen, if you are to listen to a number of our U.S. peers, they seem to be quite enthusiastic about the -- what that could imply for private markets in the U.S. and globally. So I'll be happy to follow their suit. They're closer to the action than we are. Putting it differently and not trying to do crystal ball gazing, but our most immediate focus is, do we see any impact on our portfolios? Because as I said, our key focus is we want to preserve portfolio performance. We track very, very well. We're always top decile, top quartile. And so do we see any potential negative impact to, for instance, the imposition of tariffs? And we don't. One, because we're mostly exposed to services. Two, because we have a number of businesses that actually have significant presence -- direct presence in the U.S. So actually, those probably will have gained in value. So overall, gut feel would be probably net positive. But with these things, you always have to be a bit cautious. On the real estate, you're right. And I think we are seeing the market is starting to reopen. There's a little bit of movement in real estate, both on the deal flow size, mostly because unlike private equity, you could argue, real estate assets have revalued meaningfully. And so that's opening the door for greater deal flow. That's on the one hand. And on the fundraising side, we're starting to see LPs, investors coming back to the space likely on the back of the fact that interest rates are starting to come down. So yes, I mean, you're right, we're seeing those green shoots. It's early days, though. If we take a step back, for ICG, I think we've been fortunate in our timing that we started equity strategies for real estate right -- at the right point in the cycle. I wish I could say this was due to sheer brilliance, but some of that was just downright luck. But it's better that way. So we started equity strategies in real estate at the right point in the cycle. And so we should benefit. Clearly, as I pointed to this before, there is significant potential for us in real estate, but we also have to accept that it will take time. There's clearly a space for us as a European player to grow in the real estate space. And we've launched a couple of new strategies in the past 2 years. So we're going to benefit from this market reopening. That's a good position to be in, but we're still small. We have to accept that, and it will take time for that to be a significant fee generator for us.

Thank you. Moving to the next question online from Haley Tam at UBS.

Yes, a few questions from me, please. If I could ask again about Europe IX, I understand you can't give specific comments here. But to help us think about the potential, could you maybe remind us how long it has taken you in the past for Europe fundraises -- Europe corporate fundraisers from first to last close so we can at least make our own assumptions given the very strong demand we're seeing for transactions there at the moment? Second question also on investment returns, a very minor point. But given you've highlighted the long-term gross IRR for SDP was 8.7% in the past, should we expect that to be higher now with interest rates being higher than they have in the past? And then the third and final question is just on the future development. You noted the increase in clients from 681 to 743 in the period. Is there any particular bias there by geography or type? Are you seeing more penetration with, say, insurance companies, for example?

Yes. Thank you for your questions. On fundraising timing, listen, historically, fundraising has taken us, I just want to say, 18 months to 2 years, something like that between first and final close. Some of it depends on also how far you choose to push it. And in the past, for instance, we sometimes pushed the hard cap. So that takes a bit longer. But if you feel that there's demand, it's worth doing. The market environment is clearly more difficult than it was in the past. But then again, it's our flagship strategy, and it's been quite successful. So probably balances out. In the end, I'm not expecting something drastically different from what we've experienced in the past. But I mean, fundamentally, I'm not going to say that it doesn't matter, but it doesn't matter all that much. Because of the catch-up fees, really, what really matters is what you end up with in total size for that vintage. Even if it takes a bit longer, it doesn't really change much. You're not giving up anything. You're not giving up on fees. You still have the potential to invest the strategy. So the way I look at it from an investment perspective, what you do want is to have a relatively strong early fundraise, which is always the most difficult, right, is the first close, second close because that's what's giving you the capacity to start investing in that fund. So you want that to be relatively successful. And then if it takes a bit longer for -- to get to the final amount, it doesn't matter all that much. So that's on fundraising and how long we expect to be out with Europe IX in the market. On -- you were pointing to returns on direct lending. You're right -- you're partially right in the sense that in the past couple of years or so on the back of increased interest, yes, we have seen returns for direct lending go into the double digit. So yes, because that number is an aggregate number over time, yes, it will go up. But then if you think further out, at some point, I think it's going to come down again because interest rates are not going to stay where they are forever. So yes, you're correct that we're going to see the IRR go up. Is it -- will we have a long enough period of higher rates so that we push the whole aggregate history over 10%? Not sure, don't know. It doesn't really matter in the scheme of things. I think LPs are fully aware that the period where you could generate double-digit return for senior debt was abnormal. That's why there was so much interest. In the end, if we're able to generate 8% to 9% on a -- what's -- it's a pure senior debt. We don't do a mix of mezz, and that's pure senior debt strategy. That's an exceptionally strong risk return profile. And so we're going to see -- keep on seeing appetite, which is reflected in the fundraising that we've just had. We did not expect -- just to make it clear, we did not expect that we would find -- when we set out with SDP V that we would find so much demand. We didn't expect that we'd end up with $17 billion or EUR 15.5 billion for that strategy. So we were surprised by -- not by the performance of our fund, we knew that, but by how much demand it would eventually generate. On investors and are we seeing -- no, I think it's difficult to see that we're seeing a specific trend when there is a particular area where we're seeing more demand. It's pretty much across the board. I mean we're doing more in the U.S. and the Americas more generally. But that's -- it's not as much a function of what's happening in this market as the fact that we are becoming more visible. I think we're just doing a better job, and these are huge markets. So there are still plenty of very large pension funds in the U.S. that we've never tapped or haven't yet invested in any ICG strategy. So there's a lot to go for, for us, which is why having a new Head of Marketing, who happens to be American and based in New York can't hurt. And in terms of typology of investors, we've been strong with insurance companies for a while. And so that remains the case. We keep on doing more in wealth, even though we don't necessarily showcase it, but we keep raising more in wealth through our various strategies and through various channels. We mentioned our CP, our core product in the U.S., I think, at the final year. It's a meaningful contribution to Strategic Equity, for instance. We've never had any -- well, minimal wealth contribution to the European corporate strategy. We think in IX, actually, that will be a contributor. So that is growing. But I'd be wary of calling that a significant trend. I think it's -- we're growing across the board. I haven't mentioned Asia. Asia is another one. It's slow -- it's somewhat slow moving, but we keep increasing, for instance, how much capital we're raising in Japan. And we've kept on growing in Korea, where we have a very strong investor base. So it's pretty much across the board. And the sovereign wealth funds in Asia, where we've always been strong, that's always been a strong investor base for us. They're -- one, they are generally in pretty good shape. But also as with many LPs, they are -- in this part of the cycle, they are concentrating their efforts and their allocations, and we are clearly a beneficiary of that. And so we're raising more from them as well. And as we pointed out, I think, at the full year, we've only been in the Middle East -- with the exception of Israel, where we've been for a long time. But in the rest of the Middle East, we've only been there really with strong presence for 2 years. We've been very successful in the past 2 years. And so that's still ramping up, and these are meaningful commitments. So -- yes.

And Haley, you'll have seen on Page 21 of the presentation, we show the diversification in geography type and concentration. So as we grow, we're continuing to be very diversified in terms of where the clients come from.

Thank you. Moving on to Arnaud Giblat at BNP Paribas Exane.

I've got 3 questions, please. If I could come back on the net investment returns. I understood what you said about the CLOs. I was just wondering even if you strip out the impact from the CLO write-downs, we saw a weakening of your returns sequentially in a market that seems to be improving, where rates are higher. So I'm a bit surprised by that. If you could explain what else is going on there. My second question to the same -- thank you for the detail you've given on Europe IX. I was just wondering if you could flesh out a bit more what's happening in terms of sizing and timing of the other big flagships, SDP V, Strategic Equity in North America. I'm just wondering if you could -- Infra II, if you could give a bit more detail there. And finally, the GP-led secondaries in your remarks, I think you rightly pointed to the liquidity needs for GPs, and this is a really great way for them to find us. I'm just wondering if you could talk a bit more on how you're seeing the opportunity to deploy ahead. How is that shaping up? And if -- I suppose there are a number of secondary players out there, if you're seeing more competition come in for single-led GP secondaries.

Yes. David, do you want to start off?

Yes. Let me start off. We should probably just take those in the order you said. So in terms of your NIR comment, I mean, I agree, if you strip out the CLO effect, relatively muted valuation increases elsewhere, but we don't think that's unusual. If you look at the 6-month period of time, it's not a period where we've seen significant write-ups in valuation. So the MOICs are positive but muted relative to historical stance. And I don't think that's a particularly unusual phenomenon right now.

No. And I think there is something that's important to mention. I mean the -- yes, of course, we're getting, to some extent, the benefit of interest rates but not as much as you think. Now the balance sheet, if you look where the balance sheet is invested, the balance sheet has very limited investment in direct lending, for instance, because the returns are too low. So -- and therefore, the LPs understand that we don't want to have too high of a GP commit in those strategies. Where we have much larger exposure, which is, for instance, in the European corporate strategy, the European corporate strategy, the debt elements are generally their fixed pick rate. Mostly, not entirely, but mostly. And then you have equity upside. And also, as I've pointed out, because that's -- I mean European corporate is a big part of the balance sheet. I mean correct me if I'm wrong. It's about 1/3, right, or something like...

Yes, 1.8 billion, yes.

Yes. and so you have -- as I mentioned earlier, you have a mechanical effect is when you go through a period of very strong deployment as we have, it actually mutes the growth of your NAV, your investment return, if you want, because you don't move those valuations typically for a year. You keep at cost for a year, and then it starts edging up on the NAV. Now our LPs are used to that. They don't look at stuff on -- actually, they don't even look at it on a year-by-year basis. They're really interested in the outcome of the fund. And so -- but that has an impact. So because we've had such a strong period of deployment, actually some strong exits as well as David has mentioned, this has a -- just a mechanical impact on your NAV progression, and that translates into net investment returns.

And second question was about just the funds that are in market. To give you a bit of an update on that, I think you said SDP V, but I think you probably mean SE V. SE V will remain in market for the remainder of this financial year. So we'll see what the second half brings in terms of fundraising, but the momentum is very good. The fund is already larger than its prior vintage. So we feel good about the momentum around the fundraise there. Mid-Market II also already larger than its prior vintage. That will be a market for this financial year.

Well, it's essentially -- it's already doubled the previous vintage, which, in this market environment, is -- that's unusual.

Yes. And then Infra II will likely be a market, a small part of next financial year as well. And so that will be...

Yes, final close is June '25.

Yes. And those will be the -- and to your question, those will be the bigger dial movers in terms of notional fundraising and obviously catch-up fees as well over the next few months.

And then Benoît, on Strategic Equity in the GP-led secondaries market more generally.

Yes. I mean that's in the -- I mean, right now, that's probably the most attractive asset class because in an environment where private equity funds are struggling to exit deals, we can go back as to why bid-ask spreads and -- all these things. But fundamentally, they're struggling to exit deals, but they still are under a huge pressure and growing pressure to return capital to LPs. Doing a GP-led secondary is a -- that's a very, very attractive option for that because it provides liquidity or at least the option of liquidity for their LPs. It also gives them an opportunity to deploy from another vintage, and deployment for private equity is also -- or has also been an issue in the past couple of years. So it's a very attractive proposition for GPs, and therefore, there is huge demand. I mean if you talk to private equity sponsors out there, they all have at least 2 or 3 or more candidates for a GP-led secondary. The problem is there's not enough capacity. So it's not the demand. There is enormous demand or deal flow, if you prefer. The difficulty is there's not that much capacity because not that much capacity has been raised. ICG is, by far, the largest specialist in the sector, by far. And there are a few reasons for that is, right now, do you -- outside of ICG, you typically have 2 types of players who are competing for these transactions. You have the more traditional secondaries players, but they have constraints in terms of diversification. So they're struggling to play in size, and they also have a bit of pushback from their LPs who rightly are pointing to the fact that this has nothing to do with traditional secondaries and there's no reason why they should be mixing those. So that's on the one hand. And on the other hand is private equity funds who've launched strategies. I think the question mark for them is if you're a private equity fund and you want to do one of the GP-leds, do you really want one of your competitors to be doing the transaction? Well, not if you can help it essentially. So I think what you will see -- you're asking about competition. I think many people want to get into the action because it's so attractive, but they're finding it difficult. So if you look at what people have been fundraising, so outside of ICG, everyone else has struggled. I think what you will find over time, because I think that's the way this asset class should evolve, is you will see specialist managers emerge. So you will see teams that will set themselves up to specifically address this part of the market because it is very attractive and because there is very significant demand. So you will see growing competition coming from that space. But I mean we've created an enormous competitive advantage. I mean we have a huge size advantage. Today, in many, if not most of the deals that we are looking at, we are the only player globally who can underwrite the whole deal. That's an enormous competitive advantage. So deployment is not an issue on this strategy. We have plenty of opportunities. We can afford to be incredibly selective. If anything is we have to raise the bar because we don't want to go back fundraising too soon. I mean there's a point we can't be knocking on the door of the LPs every 12 months for this strategy. And so in a sense, we need to pace ourselves, but that's good news. It just means that there are a lot of opportunities for this strategy, and it's already well deployed. So the current strategy with what we've recently signed, you may have seen, we've done CVC's first deal -- first GP-led secondary deal. We've just signed another very large deal. By that, I mean, north of 1 billion last week. There's another one that's in -- so deploying is not -- that's not the challenge for the strategy. The challenge is, listen, we're already the largest globally, but if I had my way, we'd raise a $15 billion fund. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. And it's probably going to take us another vintage or 2 before we get to that size. But that would further reinforce our position in the market, and we could absolutely deploy a $15 billion or even a $20 billion fund. We need to raise it. That's the challenge.

Thank you. Currently, we still do have a lot of questions. We will get through everyone. Angeliki from JPMorgan.

Just a few from my end as well, please. So first of all, on SE VI since we touched upon just now, can I please ask -- you sounded a bit cautious with regards to you not wanting to raise every year or so. With that fundraising now sort of coming to end at the first calendar quarter of 2025, when is it reasonable to expect SE VI. Is it reasonable to expect it by the end of fiscal year '26? Or would that be too soon, please? Second question, just to come back on the net investment returns because this is, I think, an area of big focus this morning from investors. Just to make sure I understand. So first of all, on the credit net investment returns, out of the minus GBP 34 million, how much was due to trading losses because of that kind of like cleanup that you pointed out in the U.S. portfolio? And how much is due to sort of noncash accounting markdowns on the CLOs? And within the CLO default assumptions, I mean, if I look at Page 35 of your release today, I can see that actually the default assumptions and recovery rates haven't really changed very much. If anything, they have improved relative to March. So I'm not sure I understand what drove this sort of noncash markdown on the U.S. CLO that you mentioned. And is that something that has happened in the past? Or was it the first time that you did that sort of conservative day 1 modeling, as you mentioned? And with regards to the Structure and Private Equity net investment returns, I do hear you on the European corporate. A question with regards to the outlook there on net investment returns. Do you see that sort of run rate being closer to 100 million or so, which was what you reported over the previous 3 semesters? Or should we expect it going forward to be closer to the 60 million that you reported in this H1? And last question on private credit. Where do you see deployment and realizations as we move into 2025, please? I heard you said that obviously the markets are now open, and that's leading to more realizations. Do you expect this trend to continue next year? And is there any indication that we should be expecting higher credit defaults on senior unsecured direct lending industry-wide? And if you have any comments for your portfolio in particular as well next year?

Thanks, Angeliki. It's quite a lot to unpack there. So maybe we'll start with David taking the NIR questions on credit and Structured and Private Equity, and then we can move to the outlook questions and Benoît.

If I can make just an intro to that because I find it a bit puzzling is the sort of excitement on NIR, which, in terms of valuation of the business, is neither here nor there. And also the only -- in my mind, the only thing that really matters is, is that illustrating some sort of deterioration on credit quality or levels of default? And it's not at all. If anything, it's going the other way. So -- and then you can -- now you can go into the technicalities. But to me, that's the most important thing. So I find it interesting that as we're reporting on significant increase in FMC, record fundraising and the focus is on a couple of tens of millions on a GBP 3 billion balance sheet. But it's not new. It's not new. We've seen this before. But...

So Angeliki, to answer your questions. So you talked -- you asked about sort of breakdown. It's about half and half approximately, in the GBP 34 million, between what Benoît described, which is playing long-term returns of the business and using this as a market opportunity to rotate into higher-quality collateral, and then the other half being this day 1 phenomenon. We haven't changed our assumptions as we've said in the presentation. You can see that in the data. What is happening is there's a tighter credit spread environment, and there isn't credit deterioration. And so if anything, that day 1 mark becomes more exaggerated effectively because we're marking to a very conservative model. So that's the answer to your question. It has happened in the past. The model exists. I think it's probably more visible because the rest of the valuations are relatively muted. And that -- well, again, we're looking at this over the long term, not over a 6-month period of time. And then you asked sort of guidance on SP&E (sic) [ S&PE ] segment NIR. We don't give that. Again, that's an outcome of what the funds do over time. And as Benoît says, it's a long-term investment performance, a great track record, and that will pull through into the balance sheet over time as positive NIR.

Yes, exactly. I'm looking at -- yes, are we expecting the performance of returns of our various strategies to deteriorate? No, not at all. I mean we wouldn't be raising the amounts we're raising in our various strategies if that were the case. So that's why there's always this strange disconnect where I don't think people are associating what we're seeing on the balance sheet with what we're raising. I mean they're the same funds, right? So you're not raising $17 billion for direct lending if your performance is starting to deteriorate. That's just not -- it wouldn't happen. That would show in due diligence. So it's -- there's this strange disconnect because of sometimes some of the short-term bumps on the balance sheet, which, by the way, before have also gone the other way and could very well do that again in the coming year or so. So anyway, sorry, what was it? There were so many questions.

So then there were 2 questions more left: Strategic Equity VI and the timing and sizing and also deployments and, I guess, net deployment outlook for direct lending in 2025.

SE VI, it's -- in a sense, it's up to us. And so the -- for us, what we need to decide is when do we think is the best timing to raise the maximum amount for the next strategic -- so we haven't finished raising this one. So kind of jumping the gun here, but if we're thinking SE VI, the real question for us would be -- will be, when do we want to time it to maximize the probability of raising the biggest possible fund? Because you only get that shop once every few years, right? So -- and so some of it will depend on the general fundraising environment. If the fundraising -- at some point, the fundraising market will have to reopen, right? So one way or another, private equity funds are going to have to send money back to LPs. And so at some point, LPs are going to find themselves with excess capital, so the inverse issue that they have today. So it's possible that we're going to find ourselves, and it could be in the next 2 years, where suddenly there's huge appetite for deployment by LPs. If that's the case, then we may want to take that wave and go a bit earlier because, again, deployment is not really the issue. We can accelerate or slow down deployment on the strategy pretty much at will. So could it be end of '26? Maybe, perhaps, but I mean that's crystal ball. I don't know. And again, for me, it doesn't matter all that much. I mean what really matters is -- so it certainly won't be a final close, by the way, by end of '26. That's not reasonable. It wouldn't be reasonable. It means we have to go fundraising at the end of '25, and that's just like 9 months after having final close on the previous vintage. That's just not reasonable. So it couldn't be a final close. Could we have a first close by then? Yes, it's possible. But as I said earlier, what really matters isn't really your first close, is where do you get that next vintage? Can we get it to double digit? I think it's possible, but we need to time it well. So that's for SE VI.

And then deployment in private credit.

And then deployment in private credit, if you listen to a number of private equity players out there, they've been seeing green shoots in deal flow activity for quite some time. So I'm sure at some point, they'll be right. And the green shoots will turn into actual increase in deal flow activity. So far, that hasn't really been the case. Actually, I mean, if you look at the latest Bain report, which was just for the first half of '24, essentially -- private equity deal activity, and that's true both in the U.S. and Europe, is essentially, it's flat year-on-year broadly. But it's broadly flat on the previous year, which means it's slow. So is that going to change? Possibly. I mean it has to at some point, right? It's -- you're creating a bigger and bigger backlog in the private equity portfolios. And so when that does, that's going to create a wave of financing opportunities. So our direct lending strategy will clearly benefit. For now, it's doing pretty well. I mean SDP V is almost 50% invested and is doing pretty well because it benefits from a strong legacy portfolio, and it could do add-on financing and build up financing on the existing portfolio, which is enough to deploy reasonably well, but it could accelerate meaningfully if the buyout market reopen -- really reopen. I mean there are deals happening, but it's nowhere near what it used to be a few years ago. So that's on deployment. On realizations, I pointed to that in my presentation. You do have a bit of a cyclical effect, which is when the market shuts down, as it did certainly post-COVID but also post-Ukraine, you have a period where you have no realizations at all, and so whatever new deal you do is a net positive to your fee-earning AUM. When the market reopens as it has now for about a year, then suddenly, there are a lot of refinancings. Companies take advantage to refinance their deals. And as a result, you see a wave of realizations. I think we've gone through that, at least that catch-up effect of it. So going forward, I don't think we're going to see -- I mean we're still going to see ongoing realizations, but you're not going to see a wave. So if anything, when the market does reopen -- and I don't know what that is, so I'm not going to guess. But when it does, that's going to be a significant net positive because the wave of realization will be behind us. I think it largely is today, and you're just going to have significant net new deployment. But at some point, that's going to -- I mean there is a bit of a cyclical element to that. I think you had -- part of your question was on that as well as whether we're seeing deterioration in credit. And no, we're not at all. And by the way, I don't think that's specific to ICG. I mean we know our performance is very strong compared to peers because we've just been out fundraising and we just raised the largest European direct lending fund. There is a reason. So our performance is pretty good, but that's not to say that the performance of our peers is atrocious. It's pretty good across the board because you haven't had a recession. Leverage levels are not that high, and they've been coming down. And so no, I don't see this cycle as leading to significant defaults. But incidentally, and I've been telling that to LPs, I don't think this cycle is a real test for direct lending strategies because it's a very favorable cycle for direct lending strategies. You have no recession, so very limited defaults, and you have higher rates. So it's a cycle that raises questions on the value of equity, but it's a very favorable cycle for debt strategy, completely the reverse. I don't know if you can call it the reverse, but very different from the GFC, where you had proper recession, EBITDAs plummeting and you had interest rates coming down. So everything was going against debt strategies. This time around, it's actually all quite favorable for debt strategies. So no -- and if I think you were -- you said, can you comment specifically on your portfolio, the comment I can make about the direct -- the senior direct lending portfolio is I don't think we've had a single new watch list deal for the past 18 months, maybe 2 years. So we do have a few -- not that many actually, but we do have a few deals on the watch list, but essentially, they are inherited from COVID. They're companies that were hit by COVID and struggled to bounce back. But otherwise, we're not seeing any new ones. But again, that's not a purely ICG phenomenon. By and large, portfolios are doing well. You may have seen our metrics, and we had our Investor Day, what, a couple of months ago -- [ months and a half ] ago. If we look at all of the ICG portfolios, so all of our strategies and look at the past 12 months, so this was to September, I believe, the average EBITDA growth for portfolio companies was double digit. Actually, it was 13%, which is quite high. For the European corporate, I think we're a bit higher. I think it's 14% in the past 12 months. That's average EBITDA growth of portfolio company. These are pretty good numbers for the portfolio company. So you're not seeing that tension at all. And this thing that people were worried about a year ago that the wave of refinancing, it's not going to happen because the debt markets have been so buoyant that everything has been refinanced or is being refinanced, and you're not going to see -- you're not going -- I don't think you're going to see that at all, particularly in Europe. There are higher leverage levels, typically in the U.S., if only because they're more creative in the way they define EBITDA than in Europe. But even in the U.S., I'm not expecting significant.

Thank you. Nick Herman from Citi.

I hope you can hear me okay. I have 1 follow-up and 3 questions, please. Just very quickly, David, on the follow-up on costs. Did I hear you say -- did I hear you correctly when you said cost inflation should trend down towards a 12% 5-year cost -- 5-year average in the second half, presumably, that wasn't an FY '25 comment? And then just quickly on the 3 questions on the FCA review into private debt. It seems like the FCA is relatively advanced in its analysis into private credit valuations. I appreciate your products are almost entirely closed ended. So I guess, is this interest also because of an increasing blurring between liquid and illiquids? And can you provide any insight into your actions to date with the regulator and what you think could be possible implications for the sector from here? Secondly, Strategic Equity. Are you sticking with the 6 billion target for now? I guess I would have thought that with such strong demand for CVs, you should be able to easily exceed that. And certainly, Benoît, you sounded pretty constructive on the growth opportunity here. And I guess a related question, but did you see any concern from LPs after the Wheel Pros default? And I guess any discussion of relative merits between single asset versus portfolio deals? And then just a very quick one, finally, on balance sheet. We spoke at length about 6 months ago on the intention to obtain more flexibility from the balance sheet. Just curious, I guess, with gearing coming down, is there a greater likelihood of any potential corporate actions, be it M&A or even share buybacks?

David, do you want to do the follow-up on costs first and potentially FCA as well?

Yes, sure. So just to clarify or emphasize, my comment on 12% was more an annualized figure. So think about that as our sort of trending towards an annualized figure of 12% on the FMC having been more elevated in the past. As Benoît commented, where is that investment being made? It's in marketing teams, elements of the platform as we grow. So that's what's driving the cost discussion. On the FCA, you might expect me to say this, but we don't comment, broadly speaking, on regulatory stuff. We're aware like you that there's some focus, but we've not seen anything particular about our business model as it may be more related to other counterparties at this point versus ourselves.

Yes, I think they're just trying -- listen, I think they're just trying to understand. I'm not seeing anything that would have a negative impact on what we are doing particularly in close-ended funds because there's no reason for it.

Yes. And maybe I'll take the balance sheet flexibility point since you mentioned it at the end. In the period, we repaid GBP 223 million of debt. We continue to delever. We've still got GBP 1.2 billion of debt outstanding. So some way to go on that journey. And at the moment, our priority is to keep invested in the businesses and managing the balance sheet accordingly. So we're not changing our priorities around that.

Yes. And question on SE and size. Listen, to upsize would require us to get approval from LPs to increase the hard cap, which is -- that's always a possibility, but that's -- it's obviously always a discussion with LPs. So not impossible, but it would require that approval from LPs to increase the hard cap. It's a good problem to have, but it's not just as easy as saying, let's just keep the taps open. And then single asset, so we've seen no -- I mean you mentioned that strategy had a loss on one deal, which is not a very significant deal, but on one deal in the portfolio, which I think is what you're alluding to and you're asking whether that has an impact on appetite. I mean, no, the performance of that strategy is -- I mean I don't know if that's clear, but it's doing 30% IRR plus. I mean the performance of that strategy is incredible. So no, that's not -- that hasn't affected the appetite for the strategy as is reflected in the number. The single asset versus portfolio, that's a debate that's driven by the traditional secondaries players because they can't really do single assets. So they're trying to push for portfolios, but that's a completely different approach. I mean portfolio deals are essentially -- it's name lending or name investing essentially, mostly like traditional secondaries where you're doing it on the back of the strengths of the GP. Single asset, that's essentially -- it's a private equity strategy. You're doing individual due diligence on single assets. It's -- which is why, for me, it's a bit of a misnomer. I know it's called GP-led secondaries, but it's -- they're not secondaries. I mean the deals are secondary deals in the sense that they were a buyout before. But the analysis of the deal, the nature of the risk is not secondaries at all. It's private equity. This is a private equity strategy, which is, I think, what some people struggle to understand. And therefore, you need completely different teams. You need a different approach. It's very, very different from traditional secondaries or doing portfolio transactions, which is really closer to traditional secondaries.

Thank you. Hubert Lam at...

I think there was -- we didn't -- are we, on purpose, avoiding the question on corporate and -- there was, I think...

That was balance sheet flexibility. We answered it.

Makes sense.

It's on balance sheet flexibility. You weren't avoiding anything. Hubert, BofA.

So I just got 3 of them. Firstly, on private credit, any change to the credit spread you're seeing in the market today? What's the typical spread? And do you see that -- do you see it compressing? Second question is, are you seeing any signs of refinancing from private debt back to the loan market? So any increased competition there? And lastly, you're -- we're seeing increased consolidation in private debt in both Europe and U.S. where some of the larger traditional managers are trying to get involved. How do you see this changing the competitive landscape for you?

Yes, good. So yes, there has been some margin pressure in private credit, particularly in the U.S. and particularly at the larger end of the market. And I'll address your -- the second part of your question as well because, I mean, they are linked about are we seeing loan market take -- there have been a few instances, so that's made a lot of noise but actually not that many of deals that were in private market ended up going into the loan market. I mean both of these things are a function of the current environment, which is there is limited deal flow. And because of limited deal flow, not all managers have the luxury of having been in the market for over a decade and, therefore, have a strong legacy portfolio that you can use to keep on investing. If you don't have that, which if you think about it, many managers haven't been in the market for that long, you're completely dependent on new deal flow. And so the limited amount of new deal flow that's there, it's a bond fight, as you would expect. So we try to stay clear of most of that. And that applies to both the loan market and private market participants. I think that will -- well, I don't think -- I know this will ease out when the market properly reopens, and we start to see a more normalized level of deal flow. And so I think you asked for specific numbers. I mean it's very, very deal dependent, and it will be different in the U.S. versus Europe. But you're seeing deals with margins getting done at 5.5%. I think there have been some deals done lower in the U.S., 5.25%, I think, on larger deals that were highly competed. In Europe, it's a bit higher. But so you've seen a little bit of a compression. But then again, the interest rates are so much higher than they are before that these strategies are still generating much higher returns than they were in the past. And you could argue then it's probably normal. It's -- I don't see how businesses can durably have a cost of senior debt that is close to 10% or even 9%. I mean that's just not normal. Remember, when we do -- when we look at the return for our strategies, we include the upfront fees. We're just talking about the interest plus margin. So fundamentally, long term, it's -- for businesses, it's too high. It will have to come down. And as for the consolidation, yes, you're right. There's a lot of interest in the credit space and, therefore, consolidation, and a number of players are making acquisitions essentially because it's so difficult to build it. It takes so long, and it's probably too late, quite frankly, to come into the market. I view this as very positive because I'm sure some will be very successful, but the number will also be complete disasters as some of these things often are. And so I actually think that in terms of competitive intensity, that's going to lead to lower competitive intensity. The market will have fewer players. It will have fewer very large players and also a limited number or nicher, more focused players. I think this is where the market is going to go, but it will take time. This is not something that's going to happen in a year or 2. It will take longer. But as a long-term perspective, yes, I think this is where the market is going to go. But I think some players are underestimating how different private markets are to more traditional asset management, and the cultures are incredibly different. And so I think some of that will probably lead to lower competitive intensity.

Thanks. So just a couple more online. Conscious of everyone's time. But Alex Bowers of Berenberg.

Just 2 questions, if I may. Just firstly, on cross-selling. Wondering if you could just provide some color in terms of sort of clients agreeing to kind of have more than one of your investment strategies and kind of the progress being made on that sort of things. And then sort of secondly, I'm not sure how easy this is to answer, but I'll ask it anyway. Just around your new client wins. Are these typically coming from clients who are more broadly increasing allocations to private capital asset class? Or are you kind of mostly kind of replacing existing managers on the list?

Yes, thank you. On cross-selling, I mean we're still in a significant growth phase, right? So we're still keen to broaden our client base. I mean as you've seen, 750 clients for $100-plus billion of AUM, that's a good number to have. Actually, that's well diversified if you compare to a number of our peers, but I like that diversification. I think it's a good thing. So we're still going to push for it. So our marketing team is still tasked with broadening the LP base. And also, in our case, it's not a question of we have to go down in terms of size. As I was pointing out to, I mean there are very large in terms of capacity AUM, U.S. pension funds, for instance, that we've never been in touch with. And they are way larger than most of our European clients, for instance. So there's a lot -- for us, there's still a lot to go for before we started tapping out the institutional base. So we should still be focused on that. Cross-selling, there is more of it, for sure. We do have a number of umbrella mandates where -- and that's true, particularly -- not just, but U.S. pension fund, it works well because the bar is high for them to vet you as a manager. Once you've gone through all of these hurdles, it could take time. I think our record was 2 years. Once you're vetted as a manager and they're comfortable with you, the discussions are easier, and it's easier to talk about a relationship when they invest across more strategies. So yes, we are seeing more of that. Clearly, that's been a feature in this half. We've seen it for Strategic Equity, where a few are across several strategies. It's certainly true in SDP, where they could be across several strategies. Some also, for instance, want to be in SDP, but they want to be fully drawn day 1. So we deploy their commitment into our liquid products and then flip them into direct lending as the fund invests. So we have a few mandates like that. So yes, it's -- but all this is saying is how valuable it is to be diversified and to be able to offer a broader array of products. If anything -- and I've said this before, and I'll keep saying it until we have 5 or more strategies that are in the double digit in size. If anything, we're still too small in a number of strategies. I'd like to have more strategies that are $10 billion or more because then you're very relevant even to the largest LPs out there. So there's more work for us to do there, clearly. And then we should see more benefit from that over time. But yes, we're seeing more cross-selling. It's a feature. And I think that will -- I mean I know that this will continue because it meets -- it's something LPs -- it's obviously something we're pushing for obvious reasons, but it's also something a lot of LPs like for the reasons I have explained.

And then there's a question on whether -- any comments you have on whether the new client wins are -- is new money being committed to private capital generally? Or are we taking share from competitors?

It's both. It's a combination of things. One, I mean, there are a number of managers who are -- well, actually, most are increasing their allocation to the space. The problem is they have limited capacity because as we've pointed out, there isn't that much money capital that's flowing back to them. So their target is to increase their percentage allocation to alternative, but many are still capital constrained. And so in that sense, here, they are concentrating their client relationship, and we're gaining market share. So it's very clear that -- and if you look at the numbers for players in the market, it's very clear that you have some well-known large players that are gaining market share. They are raising well even though the overall fundraising environment is depressed, which means they're taking it from elsewhere. That's exactly what we are doing. So there are significant market share shifts that are happening in the current market environment, but you're still seeing new investors coming in as well, particularly in credit because credit is a relatively new asset class for private markets. Many of LPs in private debt are new to the space. So in this sense, that is pure addition. So it's a combination of both. And as we launch new strategies, that's what we observed with infra, for instance. When we launched infra, we were actually surprised. But more than half of the investors in Infra I were completely new to ICG. They were interested because they were interested by the asset class. And that was the entry point into ICG. Then we can start having discussions with other strategies. But so as we launch new strategies, we're also tapping new pockets that before hadn't really been on our radar -- or exactly, we weren't on their radar.

Thank you. And then the -- I think, the final question on the phone. Marina from Morgan Stanley.

I just had a quick follow-up question regarding the balance sheet investment return. I understand that it's nothing new and it's not related to any type of credit deterioration and it's just a technicality. But I just wanted to understand, if you make further CLO issuance in the second half, should we then expect further negative impacts on the balance sheet investment return? I'm speaking...

Yes, Marina, I can hear you. So was that all the question? That was your question?

So yes, I just wanted to -- yes.

So as I said to sort of Oli earlier, I think we're in the CLO business for the long term. And so we're looking at this business in the long term. And it's not just the NIR component. There's dividends. There's management fees. And the return on capital of the whole package is very attractive over the long term. So we'll continue to generate CLOs.

But yes, the answer to the question is, as things stand, yes. I mean there is a broader debate as to whether our mark-to-model is such a brilliant idea because it's turning out to be incredibly conservative all the time. And it's a bit strange to have to mark down immediately a CLO the minute you're doing it. So clearly, our model is more conservative than the market is what this is saying. Our mark-to-model is more conservative than a mark-to-market would be. Is that the right thing to do? Maybe we should ask ourselves the question because clearly, that's creating more angst than the market than it should.

Perfect. There's 2 more questions that have been written in submission, hopefully, quite quick. I've been asked, David, if you could just remind us of our capital allocation policy, specifically around dividend policy and, more broadly, the balance sheet management.

Sure. Yes. So I mean the -- I think that we can simplify that as per our guidance, which is over the long term, we have a progressive dividend policy. And we said over the long term, we'll be something like mid-single-digit percentage increases in our dividend.

And then finally, in FY '24, you said that you expected a $55 billion fundraising to be more back ended. Clearly off to a very strong start in H1. Do you still expect the same shape of fundraising as you look through the full year guidance of at least $55 billion? Benoît, maybe that's one for you to take and finish this off.

So no. Listen, we didn't expect that this year would be so strong. That's very clear. So no, I no longer expect the $55 billion to be back ended. I mean if you look at the cycle, there should be more towards the back end. That's still true. But we're -- we'll see what the full year brings. And as always, there are some cutoff things, whether it's in this financial year or next. But this year, which is the first year of that new period, should be quite strong. So maybe it's barbelled. I don't know.

Yes, acceleration of Europe IX has obviously shifted a bit our fundraise.

Yes. And the success on SDP, which we hadn't factored in at that level, is having an impact as well on that shape. So yes, maybe barbelled rather than back ended.

Marvelous. Well, thank you all very much for attending today. There are no more questions. And so this concludes the presentation. Thank you.