Speakers

Alessandra Fumarola
Chief operating officer – private markets

M&G Investments

Alessandra Fumarola is chief operating officer for private markets at M&G Investments. Prior to that, Alessandra acted as head of the corporate trust business at M&G.

Alessandra’s experience over the past 25 years covers a wide range of products and transactions in the capital markets space. Alessandra joined M&G in 2018 from the Bank of New York Mellon where she spent 10 years covering different roles, most recently as head of the EMEA transaction management team.

Alessandra originally trained as a lawyer at Clifford Chance in the structured finance team and then moved to Dresdner Bank (now Commerzbank) in the EMEA securitisation and principle finance group, responsible for the structuring and origination of lending and structured products in the region.

Marion Buten
Managing director and chief operating officer

Blackstone’s European Credit and Insurance (BXCI) business

Marion Buten is a managing director and the chief operating officer for Blackstone’s European Credit and Insurance (BXCI) business. In this role, she focuses on business strategy, team management, as well as fund liquidity for the European direct lending strategies. 

In her prior roles at Blackstone, she was involved in the origination, structuring and monitoring of various European direct lending deals and was also a member of the European and US CLO franchise.

Before joining Blackstone in 2003, she worked at UBS as an Associate Director within the Leveraged Finance and Corporate Finance teams in Zurich, London and New York.

Kristian Wilson
Chief operating and technology officer

Channel Capital

Kristian Wilson is chief operating and technology officer (COTO) at Channel, where he combines deep technical expertise with end-to-end operational leadership. With a career rooted in building and scaling technology platforms, Kristian brings a technologist’s mindset to running the business – bridging strategy, execution, and delivery.

He previously led the cloud migration of Auto Integrate, North America’s leading maintenance authorisation platform, and has built scalable technology across startups and SMEs in sectors including online safety, financial inclusion, and enterprise communications.

Kristian holds a First-Class Master’s degree in Computer Science from Loughborough University.

David Allen
Partner, chief executive of Alternative Investments

StepStone Group

David Allen is a partner and chief executive of StepStone Group’s Irish AIFM and a committee member of the StepStone Charitable Giving Program. StepStone are a global private markets firm providing investment and advisory solutions across private debt, private equity, infrastructure and real estate. 

Prior to joining StepStone, he held senior positions with Cheyne Capital, Amundi Asset Management, Deutsche Bank and PwC.

Michael Daniell
Chief financial officer

NorthWall Capital

Michael joined NorthWall in 2023 as chief financial officer and chief compliance officer, overseeing financial operations, fund structuring, and regulatory governance.

With over 15 years of experience in fund management, he brings deep expertise in liquidity management, financial oversight, and operational leadership across complex investment vehicles.