The Private Capital podcast spent a delightful afternoon with François de Visscher, a fourth-generation family member of the Belgian multinational firm Bekaert, which was founded in 1860. François has been a longtime and respected consultant and banker to family offices and family businesses, and it was a real pleasure to listen to his accumulated wisdom. We spoke about what families get right and wrong about direct investing, where families have an edge over private equity funds, and how to compete for top talent against the Street. Most interesting of all were the rules their family created for joining the family business. By requiring education and experience outside the business, family members often found their own successful careers outside the family business.

François M. de Visscher is a Belgium-born advisor with more than 30 years of experience advising business-owning families across the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. He advises family ownership groups, family offices, and family companies on liquidity, capital needs, intergenerational wealth transfers, governance, restructuring, and mergers and acquisitions. In 1990, he founded de Visscher & Co., a leading independent advisory firm for family and closely held companies that has advised more than 300 family enterprises worldwide. He previously founded Wall Street's first Family Business Group at Smith Barney and most recently co-founded FODIS LP and Family Capital Partners, and serves as a senior advisor and associate partner at Cambridge Advisors to Family Enterprise.

François is a shareholder and former director of his own family's global enterprise, N.V. Bekaert S.A., headquartered in Belgium and founded by his great-grandfather in 1880. Today, the Bekaert Group generates approximately $5 billion in annual sales, operates in more than 120 countries, and is publicly traded while remaining controlled by the Bekaert family across five generations. Mr. de Visscher has served on the company's board of directors and as a member of the family council.

François is Honorary Consul of Belgium in the United States. He holds a Bachelor of Economics (Honors) from Université Catholique de Louvain, and an MBA from Rutgers University.

Please enjoy my conversation with François de Visscher.

de Visscher Advisors: https://www.devisscher.com/about-us

FODIS LP: https://www.fodisllc.com

If you like these discussions, please subscribe or leave a review.

NOTE: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Anything said by the guests or host should not be construed as legal or investment advice. Thanks for listening.

Joe Reilly is the head of Circulus Group, a family office network, and the host of The Inheritance Podcast.

FOLLOW JOE: https://twitter.com/joereillyjr

WEBSITE: https://circulus.substack.com/

INHERITANCE PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-inheritance-podcast/id1644964

If you like this show, leave us a rating or review. I appreciate it.

S5E2

©2026 Joe Reilly

We think of the markets as complex systems but today's guest André Perold, sees it as a fascinating puzzle of human behavior, asymmetric information, and 'beautiful inefficiencies.' André is a legendary figure in the world of finance. He has worked with Harry Markowitz, Jack Treynor and Bill Sharpe and is a longtime Harvard Business School professor, a board member at Vanguard, and the co-founder of HighVista Strategies. André has spent his career deconstructing how markets work and where they break. In this episode, we discuss the illusion of liquidity, the dramatic rise and fall of internal management at the Harvard Endowment, and why the best investment theory is the one that either tells you exactly what to do or makes you rich by being wrong. We'll also find out the specific traits André looks for when trying to spot the next generation of investment talent

André is a Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer of HighVista Strategies and a Partner of the firm. He was previously the George Gund Professor of Finance and Banking at the Harvard Business School and served as the Chair of the Finance Faculty. André's research and teaching were in investment management and the capital markets, for which he won numerous awards. André is a Board Member of The Vanguard Group and RIT Capital Partners and has served on the board of Mass General Brigham. He received a bachelor's with honors from the University of Witwatersrand and an masters and PhD from Stanford University.

Please enjoy my conversation with André Perold.

HighVista Strategies: https://www.highvistastrategies.com

If you like these discussions, please subscribe or leave a review.

NOTE: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Anything said by the guests or host should not be construed as legal or investment advice. Thanks for listening.

Joe Reilly is the head of Circulus Group, a family office network, and the host of The Inheritance Podcast.

FOLLOW JOE: https://twitter.com/joereillyjr

WEBSITE: https://circulus.substack.com/

INHERITANCE PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-inheritance-podcast/id1644964

If you like this show, leave us a rating or review. I appreciate it.

S5E1

©2026 Joe Reilly

Kathryn Leaf is the CEO of Pantheon, a $76 billion private equity firm that has been doing secondaries, among other things, for decades. We had a deep discussion with her about the dramatic growth in the market. Her perspectives on the current state of PE secondaries, as well as evergreen and continuation funds, were fascinating, and the market has a ways to go, she notes: "There has been about $600 billion of capital raised by secondary funds that's servicing a roughly $15 trillion private market asset class." We also talk about doing infrastructure at scale, right sizing funds, finding talent, and the inefficiencies in the secondary market.

Kathryn Leaf is the CEO of Pantheon, a global private markets investment firm with a forty-year history. As a member of the firm's Partnership Board and International Investment Committee, she oversees Pantheon's $76B platform, which includes private equity, private credit, infrastructure, and real assets. Kathryn joined Pantheon in 2008, where she co-led investments and later became Global Head of Real Assets. In 2012, she established Pantheon's infrastructure platform, now one of the world's largest. Kathryn has driven the expansion of the firm's private wealth platform, including the AMG Pantheon Fund and the AMG Pantheon Private Credit Solutions Fund. With over 25 years in private markets, Kathryn previously worked at GIC, the Singapore sovereign wealth fund, Centre Partners, and Morgan Stanley. She holds a degree in Modern Languages from Oxford University.

Pantheon site: https://www.pantheon.com

If you like these discussions, please subscribe or leave a review.

NOTE: This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Anything said by the guests or host should not be construed as legal or investment advice. Thanks for listening.

Joe Reilly is the head of Circulus Group, a family office network, and the host of The Inheritance Podcast.

FOLLOW JOE: https://twitter.com/joereillyjr

WEBSITE: https://circulus.substack.com/

INHERITANCE PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-inheritance-podcast/id1644964

If you like this show, leave us a rating or review. I appreciate it.

S4E16

©2025 Joe Reilly