Michael Kollár spent years at the epicenter of global finance on Wall Street. He later moved from the role of investment banker to that of investor, managing investment funds for large institutional clients.

At Macquarie, he worked on transactions worth more than €12 billion and was also responsible for two investment funds that together managed €1.3 billion in assets. That placed him among the highest-ranking Slovaks in global private equity.

In the first part of this interview, he explains why, after 17 years, he decided to leave the corporate world and start a business. He wants to leverage his extensive private-equity experience in a new investment fund that, together with J&T, aims to open attractive opportunities — historically accessible only to select large institutional investors — to a broader public in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

You devoted your entire career — 17 years — to Macquarie. What first drew you to finance and investing?

When I was twelve, my father took me to the bank where he worked. I still remember being most fascinated by the treasury department, which manages the bank’s cash flows. It felt different from the other departments. With a single mouse click, traders not yet thirty were executing transactions in the millions of euros. I told myself that one day I wanted to do that.

But a more fundamental answer is that I enjoy analyzing things and solving problems. Finance opened my eyes because financial markets, to me, represent the psychology of the entire world. They’re a window into the collective mindset and emotions of people everywhere. I’d also be lying if I said the above-average compensation the sector offers wasn’t a motivator.

You studied in as many as eight different countries. Was it natural for you to stay living and working abroad? Did you ever seriously consider returning to Slovakia?

I’ve been inching closer to Slovakia — from New York to London, via Munich to Prague — but I’m not planning to move back. My family and I live in Prague and we’re happy here. It pains me that Slovakia hasn’t progressed over the last twenty years at the pace of its neighbors. It’s demotivating.

When did you first hear about private equity?

Not until I started working at Macquarie. Most people enter the field after two or three years in investment banking.

Macquarie is relatively unknown in Slovakia, though it’s a global giant. Give us the short version of its story.

The first governor of one of Australia’s provinces was a man named Lachlan Macquarie, after whom Australian streets, rivers, universities — and the bank — are named today. Macquarie Bank was founded over 50 years ago. Since then it has expanded into 30 countries and has more than 20,000 employees. It manages €600 billion in assets, primarily for large institutional investors such as pension funds, insurers, and sovereign wealth funds. Since the 1990s it has been a pioneer in infrastructure investments like water utilities, power plants, airports, and ports. Companies managed by Macquarie serve 300 million customers around the world every day.

What was your role at Macquarie?

It evolved over the years. Most recently I led two investment funds with €1.3 billion in assets and was also responsible for business development — sourcing new opportunities in Europe and North America and launching new funds.

A book titled “The Millionaire Factory” was written about Macquarie. It says the founders’ philosophy was to give employees as much freedom as possible, which led to long-term success and, in turn, above-standard compensation. Was that true during your time at the firm?

We certainly had more decision-making freedom at Macquarie than in many competing banks. After all, all of my transfers to other countries were initiated by me, not by the firm. As for compensation, investment banking is fiercely competitive and people must be paid adequately. If Macquarie wanted to attract and retain talented people, it had to match other banks.

In 2013 you moved to another major financial center — London. How did your role change at Macquarie?

I moved from advising to investing, where I started managing funds. It’s a fairly standard progression — first seeing hundreds of different client situations, then applying that knowledge directly in fund management. In London I initially worked in infrastructure funds and later added real estate.

What acquisitions were you responsible for at the time?

I was part of the team focused on Central and Eastern Europe, where we owned, for example, České Radiokomunikace. In Slovakia, its equivalent Towercom, and a logistics portfolio we bought from HB Reavis. We also acquired a 30 percent stake in Daniel Křetínský’s industrial-energy portfolio EPIF for one of our funds (it includes EPH assets in gas transmission, distribution and storage, electricity distribution, and heat production, editor’s note).

So you handled some major energy and real-estate projects. Which ones exactly, and what kind of deals were they?

Mainly Slovak and Czech assets. I was responsible for due diligence and the acquisition of Stredoslovenská energetika. With České Radiokomunikace and Towercom we were buying entire companies, so the work and responsibility were broader.

Explain Macquarie’s infrastructure investing strategy. Why focus on these types of companies?

We looked for companies with strong market positions that are hard to compete with. Often they operate in regulated industries. The state controls revenues and caps owners’ profits. It’s the kind of business where Macquarie can estimate income and associated risks relatively precisely over the long term. We bought České Radiokomunikace four years before Towercom, so it was logical to expand in a sector we already understood into another country. Macquarie still owns Towercom, and České Radiokomunikace was sold in 2021.

Can you share specific numbers — how much you bought and later sold the company for?

I can’t discuss specific figures. What I can say is that since Macquarie began investing in global infrastructure in the late 1990s, we’ve generated net returns of around 14 to 15 percent per year for our investors.

The Financial Times writes that in the 1990s Macquarie pioneered a lucrative strategy of buying key public infrastructure, increasing leverage and paying higher sums to shareholders, often at the expense of investment into the infrastructure. As governments embraced privatization, Macquarie’s investments spread worldwide. How would you persuade people that strategic public infrastructure should be in private hands?

Macquarie does pay dividends to its clients — the investors in the funds we manage — and the fact that they aren’t small is no secret. But it was never at the expense of the companies we owned. We also need to sell the company at the end of a fund’s life. If we didn’t invest in it, we’d sell it for less, hurting only our investors and ourselves. In the case of Thames Water there were public voices saying it was underinvested from their perspective. In London the water pipes are on average nearly 200 years old; you could always invest more there.

I might respond with a counter-question: looking at North and South Korea and what emerged from two countries that started on the same line in 1948, would you rather have your assets in the hands of the state or a private company? I think the answer is clear. Private firms can manage investments far more efficiently and at lower cost. It’s also important to add that most of our clients are pension funds, so a large part of the profits from our investments ultimately flows back into retirees’ pockets.

Macquarie led the acquisition of the Chicago Skyway toll bridge in 2004. It was the first time in history a U.S. toll road moved from public ownership to private operation. Is there now a global trend toward roads being private rather than public assets?

That trend has existed for two decades. Macquarie also arranged financing for the D4 motorway near Bratislava. We were the financial adviser for the PPP project from which it emerged. As the economist Milton Friedman said, there is no free lunch. Even when the state builds a road, it isn’t free — it must be financed, for example from taxes. A model in which a transport project is financed by a private company makes more sense in that it will be managed more efficiently and ultimately be not only cheaper but also higher quality. In the end, only the drivers who actually use it will pay, not all taxpayers, which is fairer for everyone.

You helped launch Macquarie’s European real-estate platform. You had to start from scratch in this segment because Macquarie had previously sold its real-estate assets to BlackRock. That was in 2016. What does such an investment portfolio include? Are hospitals, airports, or ports part of it?

Those fall more under infrastructure and transport. In real estate we focused on office space and logistics parks.

In Slovakia you acquired a logistics portfolio from HB Reavis and managed it for three years. You later sold it to TPG. What did that involve?

In that particular HB Reavis portfolio there were logistics halls near Svätý Jur, in Rača, Prešov, and in Mošnov in the Czech Republic. My job was to identify the opportunity, present it to potential investors, secure the capital to finance the investment, and then handle the day-to-day management, rebranding, and the eventual sale to our competitor, TPG.

Can you disclose how much the firm earned on it?

The net return for investors, after all costs and management fees, was roughly 16 percent per year.

One fund under your management also included Amazon’s facility in Sereď. What does it mean that you owned the hall and leased it to Amazon? What is the return on such an investment?

Amazon built the hall itself, and for a fast-growing company it doesn’t make sense to own an asset whose return isn’t high enough to match its growth rate. The equity market expects them to grow by double-digit percentages per year. So it doesn’t make much sense for them to own a hall that won’t reach those numbers. Our clients, pension funds, by contrast have relatively modest return expectations and low risk tolerance. So it’s a win-win. Amazon can free up capital to reinvest in further organic growth. And in this case, Korean pension funds get a tenant with a long-term lease, strong credit quality, and therefore low risk.

So Korean pensioners own Amazon’s facility in Sereď?

That’s right.

What’s the return on such an investment?

Because the risk is low and the hall is leased to one of the world’s largest companies, the riskiness of the investment itself is relatively low. The result is a conservative investment yielding around 7 to 10 percent per year.

We’re seeing a surge in large online marketplaces. Does it pay to invest in the big industrial parks where they keep their warehouses?

It paid off over the last decade, which is why at Macquarie we did a lot of it and invested more globally in logistics than in any other real-estate type. The peak came right after Covid, around 2020 to 2021. It’s still interesting because the whole world is shifting online. Compared to China and the U.S., Europe still has considerable room to move shopping online. For the same volume of sales online, you need three times more logistics space than in brick-and-mortar stores. An online seller must offer a much broader assortment, and sales happen via parcels, which take up much more physical space than the more efficient pallets used in traditional stores. So in 10 to 15 years we will need multiples of today’s logistics space.

You built and managed a logistics fund from scratch. With capital from German investors you acquired more than €600 million in properties. You were also portfolio manager of another fund with a similar volume. How was it different?

It focused on office space across Europe. We didn’t own any in Slovakia. But it was a completely different situation, where after the pandemic and the drop in office valuations the fund needed to be restructured and put back on its feet.

The pandemic pushed workers out of offices. Wasn’t that a blow to the segment?

Certainly. In our case too, office valuations fell sharply. To some extent they’ve come back, but nowhere near pre-pandemic levels. At one point office occupancy in New York was under 50 percent. Imagine that in a huge city full of skyscrapers — half the office space empty. These were crazy numbers we’d never seen before. The world has gradually returned to normal, and more companies now require employees to be in the office regularly; working from home is far less tolerated than it was right after Covid.

You managed two private-equity funds totaling €1.3 billion. Do you know any Slovak who manages a portfolio of that size?

I’m certainly not alone in this industry, but most people working in global finance guard their privacy. For the last 17 years I did this in near anonymity and no one knew about me — that was my case too. Now the situation is changing for me, because together with J&T we are launching new funds, and I’ll be glad if people hear about them and perhaps invest.

I didn’t find much about you when preparing for this interview. Were you the highest-ranking Slovak in global private equity?

I know a few Slovaks who held senior positions in global private equity, but most have since moved to other sectors. I think those working in private equity in New York or London today could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. Private equity is a competitive sector that isn’t easy to break into. Using Macquarie as an example — it’s a firm where fewer than one percent of applicants receive an offer. Beyond hard work, intelligence, and other skills, luck plays a huge role. That was true in my case as well.

What have private-equity funds generated on average in recent years?

It depends heavily on the asset type. With conservative assets — we mentioned logistics leased to Amazon — it’s lower, about 6 to 10 percent. Riskier strategies can deliver more than 25 percent. On average, say 13 to 15 percent.

After 17 years you decided to leave the corporate world and launch your own venture. What exactly is it?

My original motivation was to invest my own money in private-equity funds. There was a certain irony in working in private equity for 17 years and not having any money in such funds myself. I always split my investments between rental apartments and index ETFs. The problem is that most private-equity funds accept only very large tickets, roughly €10 to €20 million per investor.

So I started talking to friends, colleagues, and family about whether they would be interested in joining me to pool enough money to gain access to such funds. Around me I sensed interest in doing it with me, given the relatively high returns compared with the risk taken. But there aren’t many ways to access these funds.

So together with J&T we put our heads together and devised a way to structure it and open it up to a broader public. On their side came deep knowledge of the local market, access to capital, and the strength of a brand people here have known and trusted for decades. On my side, long-standing experience with private equity — managing private-equity funds and acquiring investment platforms.

I founded my own investment fund GateVest in Malta, and J&T set up a Czech qualified-investor fund, WPC (J&T World Private Capital), with a strategy of investing in global mid-market private equity, which will bring these opportunities to local investors in cooperation with my fund.

And the second reason?

Many people asked me over the years what I actually do and how much such funds generate annually. When I told them around 15 percent per year, they usually asked whether they could invest as well. I see a market gap. Abroad it’s slowly starting to catch on. In the local Czech and Slovak market there are funds offering something similar, but none managed by someone who has devoted their entire career to private-equity funds and understands them at the required level.

Also, almost all these local funds focus on the largest global funds, where I don’t see that much added value, since most of them already offer direct access for smaller investors, often from €10,000. I want to focus more on smaller funds, which historically have higher returns but require that the selector truly knows what they’re doing, because the performance gap between the best and the worst can be as much as 15 percentage points a year. Together with J&T we can offer something that doesn’t yet exist in the Czechoslovak market.

This probably won’t be for small retail investors. What is the minimum ticket?

Qualified-investor funds have a minimum investment of CZK 2.5 million, which is roughly €100,000. In some cases, for more experienced investors, that threshold can be lowered to CZK 1 million (about €40,000).

What will your fund’s strategy be?

Simple. Most local managers tell clients they are the ones who can beat the market and generate alpha. We want to flip that idea. We’re not claiming that I alone can invest better than everyone else, but that there are people and firms around the world who have been doing it for decades and have consistent records of outperforming. So let’s go straight to them.

What returns can investors expect? Let’s compare it with the best-known U.S. index, the S&P 500.

The S&P 500’s long-term average annual return is around 10 percent before inflation. The entire private-equity industry has averaged around 15 percent over the last 30 years, and the smaller so-called mid-market funds we will focus on, 18 to 19 percent per year. Of course these are long-term averages that we will aim to achieve over an 8- to 10-year horizon. In any given year there will certainly be periods when the number is negative, just like in equity markets. You can’t invest without that. If someone promises consistent double-digit returns, then they’re either the most skillful investor in modern history or they’re not telling the truth.

You mentioned that to access private equity, a fund needs €10 to €20 million. Have you found larger investors willing to invest?

The first capital in our joint structure is coming from J&T itself, which has committed to contribute €15 million of its own capital. Additional capital will come primarily through their distribution channels, such as J&T Banka.

What fees does private equity charge?

It varies by fund. The most standard structure is a management fee of one to two percent per year on committed or invested capital. Then there is a performance fee of 20 percent of profits above an eight-percent hurdle. This is the gold standard many firms follow.

What will your fee structure be?

Together with J&T we focused on a basic pillar of investing — that investors and the fund manager must be aligned and share the same goals, so that the manager’s aim is not to maximize fees and shortchange investors. In our structure I, as the fund manager, am rewarded only if I deliver material outperformance. I do not receive any fixed annual management fee.

If the fund underperforms, will you work for free?

Exactly. I can’t get paid for failing to deliver what I promised. If the fund underperforms, not only will I work for free, but to a certain extent I will also cover other investors’ losses with my own money. I have put a seven-figure sum of my own capital into the fund, which will also cover potential losses. I believe in this strategy and I’m prepared to stand behind it.

Private equity has been democratizing in recent years. Is the goal to bring this type of investing closer to ordinary people?

I’d say it started in a bigger way four or five years ago. Private-equity managers ran out of room to raise capital from institutional clients. They said: we have to try affluent individuals — and began accepting their capital. Blackstone, the world’s largest private-equity firm, employs more than a thousand people who specialize solely in raising capital from individuals.

It is still aimed at wealthy people. Do you think private equity will become accessible to the less affluent over time?

Yes, it’s only a matter of time. Fifty years ago only the wealthiest invested in equities and it wasn’t accessible to ordinary people; today you can buy shares with a few euros a month. It will be similar with private equity. In the largest funds, access is already relatively good today — you can get in from around €10,000.

How would you describe the difference between investing in private equity and in the public markets?

Private equity rests primarily on two things. First, diversification. Because the world is more globalized, asset prices tend to move up and down together. In private equity, correlations are not as high — that’s an advantage.

Second, higher returns. Instead of 10 percent, an investor earns 15 or more. While 15 versus 10 may not seem like a big difference, if you save from university until retirement, a fund earning 15 percent versus 10 percent can generate up to six times the final amount. Compounding is an exponential function, and an extra five percentage points a year makes a huge difference over a long investment horizon.