Citywire Private Markets Forum Madrid

The Citywire Private Markets Forum in Madrid is a half-day meeting on alternatives and private markets, held at a central Madrid hotel. It is one of a series Citywire runs across Europe, and it exists to put the people who choose funds in the same room as the people who run them. Citywire describes what delegates should take away in plain terms: new investment ideas, a view of what leading fund managers are doing, and context for their own allocation decisions.

Who attends

The delegate audience is fund selectors and allocators: the investment professionals at wealth managers, private banks and family offices who decide which funds get money. Portfolio managers from international asset management firms attend on the other side of the table.

This is not a family office peer event, and the badge on this listing says so. Family office investment staff are welcome and do attend, but they sit within a wider professional allocator audience rather than forming it. If what you want is a private conversation with other principals about governance or succession, this is the wrong event. If you want to see how a dozen managers are positioning in private markets in a single afternoon, it is a very efficient one.

How access works

Attendance is strictly by invitation only. Citywire selects and invites the delegate list rather than opening registration to anyone who asks. For those invited, there is no charge for attending.

The economics sit on the other side. Asset management firms pay to take part and to run the workshops, which is how Citywire funds the event and why the delegate list is kept tight and relevant. Anyone hoping to attend who has not been invited should contact Citywire's European research team, which handles the delegate list.

What attendees get

The format is built around workshops rather than a main-stage programme. Fund groups each run a session on their strategy, delegates rotate through them, and the afternoon closes with a short panel and a long lunch for conversation. The design point Citywire returns to is time: the meetings are structured so that the hours a delegate gives up produce enough substance to justify the trip.

For a Spanish or Portuguese family office building out its private markets allocation, the practical value is coverage. Meeting ten or twelve managers individually would take weeks of diary time. Half a day in Madrid compresses that into a single sitting, with the caveat that everyone presenting is there to raise money.