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I've met Chinese investors I still can't speak to. So a year ago, I started learning Mandarin. I lived in Beijing back in 2012, travelled around, went out to Shanghai too. Never took the language seriously. Didn't think I needed to. I regret that now.
The thing I'm realising is that trust is built with language. You can use a translator, but it's not the same. I keep ending up in rooms with Chinese capital - whether it's a fund, a founder, or a family office looking to deploy outside China. Learning the language is the difference between sitting in on those conversations and actually being part of them.
Know any good tutors?
Let's get into it.
Canada's federal government launched a $25 billion "sovereign wealth fund" in April 2026, but structurally it doesn't match that description. Prime Minister Mark Carney is invoking Norway's model - a $2 trillion fund built entirely from oil surplus revenue invested abroad. But Canada's constitution puts resource royalties in provincial hands, not federal ones. Ottawa never collects a surplus like that to begin with. So where's the $25 billion coming from? Federal borrowing, deployed over 3 years into domestic strategic sectors - LNG terminals, nickel mines, AI data centres. That's not a sovereign wealth fund. That's a state investment bank financed by debt.
The reason this fund exists today is US tariff pressure. Washington moved to 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian exports - alcohol, cement, hockey sticks. The USMCA sunset review means the agreement no longer resets automatically; it comes up for renegotiation on a rolling basis. That's why Ottawa now treats access to the US market as something that has to be actively defended rather than assumed. So the government is pushing export diversification financed by debt.
The real constraint here isn't capital — it's power. Meta's $13 billion data centre campus in Alberta skipped Ontario and Quebec's power-grid queuing by pairing with its own 932-megawatt gas plant. Ontario has 6,000 megawatts of interconnection requests pending, more than the grid can absorb. That's why data centre projects there are stuck waiting for capacity while Alberta builds. The fund hasn't deployed capital yet, but its mandate points to projects that already have federal backing or private capital lined up - Silism's LNG, Crawford Nickel, Meta's campus. Projects with secured power, signed offtakes, or federal fast-track status get first access.
Watch the breakdown: Canada's $25B 'Sovereign Wealth Fund' Isn't What It Claims
Also this week:
China's state-directed capital strategy. Beijing isn't trying to outspend the US on AI anymore. Local government debt is too high, growth is slowing. So it found a new funding source: its own $28 trillion domestic stock and bond markets. CXMT, the chipmaker, IPO'd in July on the Shanghai STAR Market, raised $9.8 billion, and shares closed up 466%. Days before the listing, Beijing pumped in $8.3 billion to stop a semiconductor selloff. That kind of debut doesn't happen on its own. China raised $217 billion in 2 years; the US raised $1.4 trillion. But Chinese tech bonds price at 1.9%, compared to 300 basis points higher in the US. Cheaper capital closes the gap.
Unitree's humanoid bet. The robotics company raised $904 million on the STAR Market. Retail demand was oversubscribed 8,000x - odds of winning an allocation were 0.018%. Unitree shipped 5,500+ humanoids last year, more than any company on earth. Days before the IPO, the US banned new Chinese humanoid and quadruped robots from entering the country. Unitree didn't blink. DeepSeek took a $20M stake; Tencent invested through its own vehicle. Both will help build Unitree's AI models. China doesn't need the US market for this to work.
Private credit under pressure. BlackRock TCP Capital Corp handed nearly half its debt portfolio to Pantheon in a continuation vehicle deal. $523 million in loans across 78 companies. The buyer paid $152 million in gross proceeds. NAV took a 10.4% hit - $57 million - to get it done. This fund has been reporting NAV losses for over a year, and reports point to DOJ scrutiny over valuation. Investors rewarded the move anyway; stock jumped 11%. One of the clearest signs yet of stress sitting inside private credit right now.
What's crossing my desk and my conversations this week:
UK balance-sheet lender, family-owned, 40 years, zero outside capital. I met a lender who's never raised a fund. In 40 years, they've taken no outside capital. Everything they lend is on their balance sheet. No LPs, no fund structure, no one to answer to but themselves. That makes them quick and efficient. They write senior debt preferred, $5M to $60M tickets, LTV 65-70%. Won't do ground-up development, but will do refurbs and conversions. Can close in 2-3 weeks. On their books right now: a £10M loan against a farm in Scotland, a £25M loan against a house on one of London's most expensive squares, a £14M loan against an office block. They're active across asset classes and they're not going anywhere.
Dubai family office, oil-trader origins, now acquiring for scale. The family started as an oil trader in 2009. Now every acquisition has to make that trading business bigger - more volume, more market access, more control of the flow. If the asset only throws off yield, they pass. Their M&A lead has personally closed over $500 million in deals. They're focused on storage terminals and market access, 100% ownership, no partners. Turkey, Africa, South Asia. Now Brazil. They prefer emerging-market opportunities; the big mainstream hubs are too crowded. They put $70M into Dubai property over two years, then stopped. When I asked why, the answer was simple: "We only buy when there's blood in the streets."
Exit founder turned lender, £400M deployed. I met a guy who spent 27 years in finance. Started at 21 in mortgage-backed securities. Then the crash, then years cleaning up bad loan books for European banks. In 2013 he raised £93 million and put 80% straight into commercial property throughout the UK. Sold the entire portfolio two and a half years later. Then he did the thing almost nobody does with the money they make from a huge exit — he lent it out himself. Mainly bridging loans. £400M lent over his career. Short-term, secured against property. No fund, no LPs, his own money. His logic was simple: he'd spent a decade watching what happens to people who own things when the market turns. He'd rather be the one holding the loan than the one holding the building. Now he's in Dubai placing other people's deals.
One deal I underwrote this week:
$350M St. Louis tower, foreclosure-to-luxury conversion. The developer bought this tower out of foreclosure for $3.6 million. The ask on the table is an $8 million bridge loan to fund permitting and architectural work before a $120 million construction loan closes. The tower's converting to 631 luxury apartments backed by $175 million in tax credits.
Stage of risk: pre-construction, entitlement and design. Location: downtown St. Louis, steps from the Arch. High office vacancy, high residential demand. New state legislation just added conversion credits. Downside protection: first position collateral on the building, bridge LTV sits around 55%, sponsor already has real cash in the deal. Exit: refinance into the construction loan. Takeout lenders are already circling. 12-month term, interest reserved upfront.
No mentor handed me any of this. No warm intro got me in the room.
I was born in the UK, grew up in Australia, and my path was never supposed to be linear. Started in door-to-door sales. Degree in International Relations. Random internship in Beijing. Became a market intelligence analyst. Got bored, moved into cybersecurity. Helped close a $5M MOU for a startup. Expanded the company into Southeast Asia. Quit my job, wanted a new challenge. Built a marketing agency, scaled to $30k a month. Ran it for a few years, realised I hated it. Shut everything down to start over. Fell in love with private markets.
What got me here was picking up the phone, over and over, for years. Meeting people, making friends. Now I raise capital for commercial real estate globally by matching private credit lenders and equity investors I've met over the years. No finance degree. Just a laptop in Southeast Asia and a spreadsheet full of people who trust me.
The thing I keep getting asked is: how do you build trust without credentials? The answer is simple — you show up. You listen more than you talk. You follow through when you say you will. You don't need a pedigree to do that. You need consistency, and you need to actually care about the people you're connecting.
A snapshot of what's currently moving through Capital Arbitrage:
Note: For the best reading experience, open this on a desktop.
Deal | Asset Type | Geography | Structure | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Miami Luxury Residential | Greenfield | USA | Equity | $40M |
South Carolina Multifamily | Greenfield | USA | Debt/Equity | $93M |
St Louis Tower | Residential | USA | Bridge | $8M+ |
UK Office Block | C14 | UK | Debt | £14M+ |
This isn't the full pipeline - just a flavour of what's active. If you're an investor or lender active in any of these asset classes or geographies, reply to this email.
That's all for this week. See you next Friday.
— Jordon
P.S. I get 500,000+ monthly impressions on LinkedIn and a growing list of private capital readers right here. If you'd like to get your company, fund, or raise in front of this audience, just reply to this email.