KKR bets on "de-conglomerization"

Henry McVey, chief economist for private equity giant KKR, is out today with a mid-year global macro trends report, which continues to forecast lower overall returns. One bright spot, McVeigh believes, is in the trend of "de-conglomerization." His argument:

As corporations around the world look to optimize their global footprints in a world that is increasingly turning domestically focused, we believe that this transition will create a significant opportunity for investors to buy, repair, and improve non-core assets from regional and global multinationals. We also see increased activism in the global public equity markets as a play on our thesis. Importantly, as we describe below, we see this trend towards entities hiving off non-core assets currently extending beyond traditional corporations to now include Infrastructure and Energy Assets.