Hartley Rogers featured in Bloomberg: Tariffs

Hartley Rogers, co-chairman of private markets investor Hamilton Lane Inc., said the tariff-driven selloff in global markets may create investment opportunities for alternative asset managers.

“If you look back historically at times when you’ve had this happen before, you’ve had very favorable conditions for private market investing,” said Rogers, whose firm oversees nearly $1 trillion in assets, speaking at a briefing in Melbourne on Tuesday. “Things are cheaper” and financing costs turn lower, he added.

Investors globally are reexamining where to put funds after $10 trillion was wiped off global equities since President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs last week that fueled fears of a global recession. Mid-market companies may offer better investment targets than larger peers given they tend be less vulnerable to potential global supply-chain shocks from tariffs, said Rogers.

The trend toward investing in private markets picked up after the global financial crisis in 2008 and the pandemic when central banks cut interest rates to support economies, causing money managers to chase higher-yielding assets. Traders’ bets on how much the Federal Reserve will lower US interest rates this year have been fluctuating, but at least three reductions are now reflected in overnight interest-rate swaps for 2025, with the first fully priced in for June.