Markets don’t just happen. They’re built.
We forget this. Public markets weren’t a completely organic development - they were engineered over centuries, through boom and design and crisis.
Every layer of trust we now take for granted: the information rights, the settlement rails, the benchmarks, came from people who did the work and built them.
Luke Flemmer is one of those people.
I sat down with Luke a few weeks ago at the iconic Biltmore in Phoenix during MSCI’s inaugural Private Assets Summit for a fantastic conversation.
He runs the private assets business at MSCI. And his central point is: private markets are at the very start of that work.
Why now?
Private used to be the spice. Now it’s the main dish.
Institutional portfolios hold between 20 and 50 percent in private assets. The allocations scaled fast. The infrastructure underneath them did not. Luke calls it the industry’s “growing pains.”
Why it matters more than people think:
Most people picture private equity as a guy in a vest in Midtown. It is pension money. It is individual savers. It is capital managed on behalf of regular people.
Private capital is public capital.
Bad data is not just a technical problem. As Luke put it, bad information flow is intrinsically value destructive. It slows the market and shrinks returns for the people these institutions serve. This is civic work.
What MSCI is building:
Asset-level benchmarks, so investors see exposure across funds, not just inside them
Daily nowcasting indexes for private equity and private credit, closing the gap between quarterly marks and real value
A shared classification system, so the industry can finally agree on what to call things
Markets get built by people who decide to build them.
I’ve been delighted to get to know Luke and the MSCI team - and can safely say some of the smartest, most public-spirited people in finance are now building private markets infrastructure.
Hope you enjoy the conversation!
These are the questions on the agenda in London on June 25, where the operators, technology leaders and builders shaping private markets infrastructure are convening for The 2026 Private Markets Technology Summit.