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Recently, I told a lender something that wasn't true. Of course, it wasn’t intentional. That’s just my mistake for trusting the deck I received.
The developer gave me valuation figures. I sent those to a family office. They asked questions I couldn't answer. So I went back to the source and found the figures didn't match. Not even close.
I didn't know what to ask for. I took what they gave me at face value. I never asked for proof.
The lender was cool about it. But it made me think about what actually protects you in cross-border deals when you can't rely on enforcement. It's not the contract. It's not even the financials. It's character.
I've walked away from eight-figure deals when something felt off. Every time, it came down to the same question: would I trust this person if no contract existed?
Because if I'm willing to ignore someone's character to get paid, what does that say about mine?
Let's get into it.
$10B secondaries close - 43% oversubscribed. CVC Secondary Partners closed Secondary Opportunities Fund VI on September 3rd, the largest secondaries vehicle in the firm's history and the biggest European-raised vehicle this year. The fund hit $10B against a $7B target, with 200+ institutional LPs committed and half the capital coming from new investors. The story isn't the size - it's the spread: SOF V in 2023 hit $5.8B and posted a 21% IRR, but SOF III did 8%, and they still raised $10B.
LPs aren't buying performance here. They're buying an exit. Exits have stalled, distributions have dried up, and institutional capital is sitting on stakes they can't turn into cash. Carlo Pirzio-Biroli, who runs the platform, points to "several trillions of capital trapped in unsold private equity holdings" as the opportunity. Secondaries used to be where you went when something went wrong. Now it's the exit market.
Also this week:
$2T IPO pricing. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs locked in a dual mandate on Anthropic's IPO, scheduled to go live next month. $2 trillion valuation, $100B+ raise size. This is the largest public listing ever attempted, and it's the anchor price for every AI infrastructure capex and data centre deal that follows.
AI borrowers hit $500B. Waymo is in late-stage talks with PIMCO, Blackstone, and Sixth Street for a $3B+ loan - the company's first debt raise ever. Alphabet can print investment-grade bonds. Waymo went to private credit instead, which tells you this is being underwritten as standalone risk, not parent risk. A stack is forming: bonds for the strongest names, project finance for the steel and power, private credit for everything unrated, unfinished, or unprofitable. Most of what gets built next will get built on borrowed capital.
What's crossing my desk and my conversations this week:
A Filipino UHNWI lender. Met a billionaire who made his fortune selling karaoke machines - now a 100+ hectare property empire in a Class 2 city in the southern Philippines. He offered to be the bank for a property deal: 10% down, 8% interest. That's usually how it goes. Once you have the money, lending it out beats spending it.
Dubai villa flip: 61.6M all-in, 15-month exit.
Buy an unfinished villa in Al Barari below asking price. Fit it to renovated-comp standard. Add 2,081 sqft of permitted built area. Sell within 15 months.
The numbers: Acquisition at AED 38M (ask was 40M). Completion costs: AED 17M for shell-and-core to finished 6-bed, extending from 14,919 to 17,000 sqft. All-in 61.6M. Target exit: 80M (4,706/sqft). Comparable 6-beds printed 4,826 and 4,861 per sqft. Net profit: 16.6M over 15 months. IRR: 21%.
Why the location works: Al Barari is 60% green space. The plot is corner-positioned backing the gardens. Eight renovated sales in the last 14 months, all held long-term — people live there, they don't flip. The downside: break-even sits at 63M. A corner plot next door sold for 72M. Basements and lift already in (biggest cost is paid). No debt. No forced sale. One villa, one buyer, one sale. Only eight sales like this in 14 months, so exit path is controlled.
My main concern is that 80M is the highest ever paid for a 6-bed here, and that was July 2025. But the structure works.
Verdict: Strong fit for UHNWIs. Strong fit for Family Offices. Medium fit for Private Credit. Weak fit for Institutions.
Most of my deals are cross-border. Different jurisdictions, different enforcement, different legal systems. By the time you're chasing someone through a foreign court, you've already lost.
The contract isn't what protects you. Financials tell you what someone has already done. Character tells you what they'll do when it gets hard.
So here's what changed for me: when someone gives you numbers, you need to know what to ask for, what questions to ask, and what proof is needed. I took a developer's valuation at face value, sent it to a family office, and the numbers didn't match when the family office asked follow-ups. Updated figures came back. But it made me look bad.
The lesson: your job isn't just to introduce deals. It's to verify the information given before it goes forward under your name. Every deal gets hard. Markets turn, timelines slip, prices move. That's when you find out who you're actually in business with.
And no clause on page 40 is going to save you.
A snapshot of what's currently moving through Capital Arbitrage:
Note: Today, I’ve removed the table. Let me know if you prefer this format.
Real Estate:
Hong Kong - Land Purchase & Rezone - $70M Debt/Equity
Netherlands - Office Portfolio Conversion - $150M Debt/Equity
Dubai - Luxury Villa Flip - $16M Debt/Equity
UK - Brownfield Data Centre - £65M Debt
USA - New York Multifamily - $2M Equity
Canada - GPU Financing - $89M Debt
Australia - Debt Purchase / Refinance - $350M
Secondaries:
Direct GP access to Revolut, Databricks, Stripe, Perplexity and Moonshot.
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
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