Peter Cornelius Keynote Speaker

MD and Chief Economist, AlpInvest Partners (2005-2025)
Former Group Chief Economist, Shell Group and Deutsche Bank's chief international economist
Author of three books on finance and investing

Peter Cornelius's Biography

Peter Cornelius served as Managing Director of AlpInvest Partners for nearly 20 years, stepping back in 2025. In this role, he was responsible for analyzing the economic and financial environment for private equity markets and examining the implications for strategic asset allocation. AlpInvest Partners is part of the Investment Solutions division of The Carlyle Group.

He is an Advisor to Summation Capital in NY and is a Member of the Board of Advisors to RealAssets.com

Dr. Cornelius joined AlpInvest from Royal Dutch Shell, where he was Group Chief Economist. Previously, he was Chief Economist and Director of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Program. Prior to that, he was Head of international economic research at Deutsche Bank and a Senior Economist with the International Monetary Fund. He also served on the staff of the German Council of Economic Advisors. Peter has also been the chairman of the European Venture Capital and Private Equity Association’s working group on developing private equity risk measurement guidelines.

Dr. Cornelius was an adjunct professor at Brandeis International Business School, a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and a visiting lecturer at Cornell Tech. He serves on the Board of Directors of the BTI Institute and is a research fellow of the Emerging Markets Institute at Cornell University. He also serves on the advisory boards of the Private Capital Research Institute at Harvard Business School and Institute of Private Capital at Kenan–Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and on EMPEA’s Latin American Council.

Dr. Cornelius studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science and received his PhD in economics from University of Göttingen. He is the author of International Investments in Private Equity (Elsevier, 2011) and a co-author of Mastering Illiquidity (Wiley, 2013) and “Financing Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Markets” (with L. Casanova and S. Dutta; Elsevier, 2017).

His expertise includes;