经济周刊：私人债务市场的波动

William Blair One of the things we learned from the likes of HymanMinsky and Charles Kindleberger has been that stabil-ity breeds instability. The seeds of the next financialcrisis are often sown in the previous expansion, and thebest way to predict which part of the economy will bethe catalyst for the next financial crisis is to simply lookat who is taking on the most credit/leverage during theprevious expansion. While there does not always have to have maturity of 10-12 years, and most do not useleverage. These funds are also fully locked up and do 2)Evergreen or semi-liquid private credit funds –These are open-ended (or evergreen) structures, where investors can enter and exit periodically(either monthly or quarterly). Similar to traditionalfunds, these also provide lending to real economyborrowers, but the loans tend to be more senior. be a crisis, when there is, it is often the result of excessive leverage built against increasingly speculative underlyingassets, coupled with duration mismatching. Minsky andKindleberger also believed that crises were less the result of surprise exogenous shocks, but rather more often en-dogenous, i.e., the result of cumulative bad balance sheet 3)Business development companies (BDCs)– Theseare public or private registered investment vehiclesoften set up to provide financing toseniorsmall andmidsize companies that are often PE-sponsored. Someof these funds use a small amount of leverage, 1.5x-2x,which is subject to regulatory caps. These funds are One of the key characteristics of private markets is theiropaqueness. Because private markets are underregulated(and where there is regulation, it is very fragmented) whencompared to public debt markets or simple bank loans,there is a relative lack of publicly available data. This lackof regulation is what has increased their attractiveness forboth lenders and borrowers who may not be investment-grade and struggle to gain access to credit elsewhere—es- We are seeing moderate stress for four main reasons.First, interest rates have moved up from COVID-relatedlows of 0.25% on the fed funds rate to 3.5%-3.75% to- Second, loan growth has soared over the last few years.In the U.S., assets under management have increasedfrom $675 billion in 2019 just before the pandemic to$1.4 trillion at the end of 2024 and an estimated $1.5tril-lion–$2.1trillion at the end of 2025 (exhibit 1). Too muchmoney was chasing too few assets during this time. As aresult, there are legitimate concerns that due diligenceand lending standards over this period were lowered, After the GFC, private credit has been a very convenientway for many banks, and particularly insurance compa-nies, to continue to lend, but off-balance-sheet, where Private lending comes in roughly three forms: 1)Traditional private credit funds –These classicclosed-end funds provide direct lending to mainlyreal economy borrowers, such as middle-market cor- Federal Reserve, 20% of assets under managementwere price of oil and other commodities, which is coming William Blair That does not mean the adjustment will be painless.Returns are likely to disappoint, some vehicles—par-ticularly publicly traded BDCs and semi-liquid funds—will remain volatile, and weaker borrowers will facerefinancing challenges. But this looks more like a periodof repricing and differentiation than a systemic unwind.In short, the tide is indeed going out, and there will be Economic Scorecard IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES Please contact us at +1 312 236 1600 or consult https://www.williamblair.com/equity-research/coverage for all disclosures. Richard de Chazal attests that 1) all of the views expressed in this research report accurately reflect his/her personal views about any andall of the securities and companies covered by this report, and 2) no part of his/her compensation was, is, or will be related, directly orindirectly, to the specific recommendations or views expressed by him/her in this report. We seek to update our research as appropriate. DOW JONES: 46021.40S&P 500: 6606.49 The compensation of the research analyst is based on a variety of factors, including performance of his or her stock recommendations;contributions to all of the firm’s departments, including asset management, corporate finance, institutional sales, and retail brokerage; firm OTHER IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES 12 months. The assessment of expected performance is a function of near-, intermediate-, and long-term company fundamentals, industryoutlook, confidence in earnings estimates, valuation (and our valuation methodology), and other factors. Outperform (O) - stock expectedto outperform the broader market over the next 12 months; Market Perform (M) - stock expected to perform approximately in line withthe broader market over the next 12 months; Underperform (U) - stock expected to underperform the broader market over the next 12months; not rated (NR) - the stock is not currently rated. The valuation methodologies include (but ar