Hey! Thanks for being here for Edition #14. You're one of 240+ subscribers, and I genuinely appreciate every single one of you.
I got sent a phishing email earlier this week - a fake invitation to an event. Every line was a link. Click "Invitation," click "Invite," click something.
I spotted it straight away, mostly because I used to work in cybersecurity, but honestly, I learned to notice this stuff earlier than that. As a kid playing computer games, losing your account to a keylogger was just normal.
As my brand grows, I expect more of this. I post about the people I meet and the deals I work with. That makes me a target. It comes with the territory.
I'm not a cyber expert. I'm not technical. My cyber hygiene is probably decent, but nobody is unhackable. I just hope I recognise the signs before it's too late.
Let's get into it.
A pension fund just backed a £500m development finance lender. Pluto Finance passed £500m of commitments into Lending Vehicle VIII, its evergreen property and development fund, with the UK's largest private pension fund as part-owner. The evergreen structure is the thing people usually skip over - no fixed fund life means no forced exit. They keep recycling into the same borrowers. Over 65% of their development lending goes to repeat borrowers. That's a very different business model to a 10-year closed-end fund chasing an IRR clock.
Banks pulled back from development risk after 2008 and never really came back. Pension money moved in behind them and is now competing on rate. Senior pricing at 3.95% with stretch seniors hitting up to 90% of costs. The parallel book: a £2bn partnership with Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies, bigger tickets (£25–£100m), broader geography (Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, Portugal). £4bn+ lent since 2011. 10,000+ homes delivered.
Also this week:
The cost of being overconfident: A 22-year-old named Malone Lam stole $245 million in Bitcoin through social engineering, then spent nearly all of it in a month. Fleet of 28+ luxury cars, Hermès Birkins handed out at parties, nightclub tabs of $400k–$569k per evening. One co-conspirator forgot to use a VPN. The FBI showed up at his Miami rental house 30 days after the heist. He pleaded guilty to RICO charges in September. The average life expectancy of a $245M theft, once you start living like you just pulled off a heist, is apparently about 30 days.
What's crossing my desk and my conversations this week:
Hong Kong over Singapore: I sat down with Jon Ching of Hong Kong Flying Tiger Asset Management to understand why $151B+ went to Hong Kong as Asia's capital hub over Singapore last year. His answer was simple: Singapore is next to China. Hong Kong is part of China. That opens two legal routes into Chinese companies - QFII or a Hong Kong fund. Singapore has neither. 119 IPOs in Hong Kong last year, up 226% in twelve months. European and Middle Eastern family offices keep asking Jon the same thing: they want China exposure; they just don't know how to get it legally. Most investors are still picking the city they've heard of over the one that gets their foot in the door.
Direct deployment mandate: I spoke to a family office allocating $600m a year across real estate, venture, and growth. They've built an 85-person team designed to deploy capital directly into deals where they can control the terms and eliminate the middleman. Their real estate focus is the UAE (completed assets only, no ground-up development); venture is US-focused. On sourcing: "Just send a high-level teaser. We know what we're looking for and we'll tell you if it fits." Minimum tickets $15–20M, maximum $100M. Direct cap table on venture allocations. Fintech, Defence, AI verticals. No blind pools or management fees.
GPU infrastructure financing, Canada. I found genuine investor appetite for institutional-scale AI infrastructure financing this week - a Canadian data centre running 1,176 NVIDIA B300 GPUs (147 Supermicro systems) with USD $89.8M total procurement value. The deal ticks the boxes: 100% compute capacity offtaker locked under contract through 2030 with a two-year extension option; 12–18% projected annual yield targeting 3-year principal return; equity investors own the hardware. The data centre is already live and deployable in weeks following funding. Every structural element that makes a GPU deal de-risked is there.
But here's the problem: the sponsor won't tell me who they've already approached, won't provide basic information about their entity, and demands I get their sign-off before making any introductions - all despite asking me to sign an NCNDA first. I've got fund managers and family offices ready to move on this. The deal works. The sponsor process is an absolute joke. Until they open up on who they're shopping and what their structure actually is, I'm stuck.
Verdict: Deal fundamentals are strong. Sponsor process risk is high enough that I can't move capital to the table.
When I asked that family office what they're looking for right now, what struck me wasn't the size or the geography - it was how direct they were about what works and what doesn't. No hidden process. No "we'll be in touch." Most allocators hide behind process. How many tell you exactly what they want on the first call?
That clarity costs them nothing and saves everyone time. If you're raising capital or shopping a deal, that's worth noting. Gatekeepers love process for a reason - it's protective. But the best capital sources I've spoken to this year have moved in the opposite direction. Smaller team, clearer criteria, faster answers. Less theatre.
A snapshot of what's currently moving through Capital Arbitrage:
Note: I’ve removed the table today. 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 Blue Origin, Databricks, Stripe and Firehawk Aerospace.
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.