COP 27 and the birth of the world's 8 billionth baby speak directly to the funds industry, explains Nick Fitzpatrick.

Two events in recent weeks speak directly to the funds industry. COP 27 obviously connects with the industry’s net-zero mission, and the birth of the world’s 8 billionth baby (at least in my head) connects with pensions.

Net zero has a deadline: 2050. Quite when the deadline for the ‘pensions timebomb’ is – when this demographic countdown finally ends (or has ended?) – is perhaps less certain.

Crises in the past three years seem to have pushed the pensions problem a little further from thought. Sandro Pierri, the CEO of BNP Paribas AM, reminds us this month that demographics is one of the major “disruptions” for asset managers in the next ten years.

As a kind of addendum to our Paris CEO content, we have an interview with former French minister Renaud Dutreil, who championed private equity ‘democratisation’ while in government. Private capital could be a perfect marriage between ‘real’ people’s money on one side and the small and medium-sized companies that many people work for on the other.

This broadening of PE’s audience is a compelling idea – and perhaps when he or she is older, the world’s 8 billionth person will be fully invested.

Nick Fitzpatrick, group editor, Funds Europe