👋 Hey, Nick here. A big welcome to the new subscribers from Liberty Mutual Investments, MEAG, and 6 Meridian. You’re now one of the 3,370 subscribers, and you’re reading the 183rd edition of my private credit newsletter.
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📕 Reads of the Week
When you’re early in your career, you’re trying to win every single hand — you’re negotiating every last thing like it’s the end of the world. And what you realize is, congratulations, you structured a great deal, and you are never going to do a deal with me ever again…
In private markets, there’s an art to it. You need to want to do a deal with me, you have to trust me, and you have to like me. When I say I’m going to do something, am I going to follow through with it?
If you act that way, your world actually expands. Every good deal I’ve done where I’ve done what I said I could do, you’re talking to three or four people and telling them, ‘Actually, you should work with Joel, you should work with Ares.’ It is the brand.”
Joel Holsinger, Co-Head of Ares Alternative Credit, on How I Invest Podcast
Market Updates
1) Do banks have BDCs over a barrel?
The Fed published a great paper on bank funding to BDCs. A few bullets below:
Funding is concentrated. The top three banks account for almost half of the lending to BDCs, the top five account for about two-thirds, and the top ten account for more than 80 percent.
BDCs rarely change bank lenders, with data showing less than 1% of BDC borrowings with new bank providers.
2) The core middle market remains the key hub of European direct lending activity
Deals between €100m-500m accounted for 62% of transactions in H126.
Larger deals share of the total remained largely stable, with deal count for €1bn+ transactions being 15% on a year-to-date basis, well below the 21% peak in 2024.
👉 CVCs European Credit Perspectives
👉 Debtwire’s European Direct Lender Rankings
3) Securitizations are becoming a common feature of secondaries fundraising.
Franklin Templeton’s $1.5 billion deal is the latest in a wave of CFOs
The CFO structure opens the door to investors, such as insurance companies, to invest in highly diversified, long-dated pools of private assets in a way that offers some downside protection.
Manager & LP Updates
Blue Owl led a $2.4 billion compute equipment financing for IREN, a US-listed AI Cloud platform. The facility is structured to fund equipment purchases in tranches over a defined draw period, allowing capital to be deployed alongside the delivery and commissioning of hardware. Link
BlackRock is exploring potential buyers for TCP Capital’s remaining $671m loan portfolio. Link
Partners Group raised $1 billion from Indonesian sovereign wealth fund Danantara. Link
Partnership Updates
Legal & General and WTW, a global insurance broker, partnered to launch a UK private credit LTAF. The launch follows similar moves by Apollo and Hamilton Lane, which all launched LTAFs this year. Link
Private Credit’s Sports Opportunity
Apollo published a great paper on the business of sports. Most of the analysis focuses on private equity; However, it also highlights the opportunity for hybrid and private credit solutions to unlock liquidity, optimise balance sheets, and capture equity-like upside with credit-like risk. Below are my highlights:
Sports Franchises Continue to Trade at Premium Valuations
Just as athletes and teams have reset what is possible on the field, the business of sports is breaking records of its own.
Franchise valuations, media rights, sponsorship deals, and global fan engagement are reaching levels once thought out of reach.
The valuations of NBA teams have grown over 10x in the past 20 years; the global sports media rights market surpassed $60 billion in 2024
US Team Valuations have Outperformed over 60 years
In an era defined by technological disruption and geopolitical volatility, few asset classes demonstrate genuine resilience.
Professional sports stand apart for their structural insulation and cultural permanence. More than 73% of adults in the US watch sports, and over half follow American football—the country’s most popular sport.
Because of the deeply embedded social and cultural relevance, sports franchises represent a long-horizon asset class. Team valuations have compounded at roughly 13% per year over the past six decades.
Even amid rapid technological change, demand for live sports content has remained stable and adaptive—a pattern Apollo believe unlikely to reverse over the next 20 to 30 years.
Average Sports Teams are Meaningfully Underleveraged
Traditional lenders have long treated the sector as niche, leaving inefficiencies and gaps in the capital stack
Despite record valuations, most franchises remain under-levered at roughly 10% loan-to-value, creating vast potential for hybrid and private credit solutions to unlock liquidity, optimize balance sheets, and capture equity-like upside with credit-like risk.
Apollo estimates sports represents a $2.5 trillion+ addressable market, with a growing portion increasingly suited to private credit and structured capital.
Opportunities include:
Senior secured team and league lending,
Stadium and media-rights financing,
Transfer-fee factoring
NAV lending
Preferred equity
💰Fundraising News
Nuveen’s $1bn Sustainable CRE Fund
Nuveen Green Capital, Nuveen’s sustainable finance, announced a first close of $1 billion for its C-PACE Lending Fund IV. C-PACE is a public-private financing program administered at the state level that provides building owners and developers with low-cost capital to make commercial buildings more energy efficient, water efficient, and climate resilient.
BridgeInvest’s $612m Specialty Credit V
BridgeInvest, a US real estate credit manager, raised $612 million for the second close of its Specialty Credit Fund V. The open-ended investment vehicle lends senior-secured, middle-market commercial real estate loans across the US. It invests across real estate asset types (e.g., multifamily, industrial, retail, hotel and office) and business plans (e.g., pre-development, development, and cash-flowing). It targets loans with a deal size between $20 million and $150 million.
Granite Asia $500m APAC fund
Granite Asia, a Singapore-based investment manager, announced its raised more than $500 million for its inaugural private credit vehicle, Libra Hybrid Capital Fund. The fund lends senior secured loans to businesses across Asia-Pacific.
Bridge $500 million Asset-Backed
Bridge, a New York-based purchase order finance platform, launched a $500 million direct lending programme for suppliers to the largest US retailers. Bridge originates and services the loans, funding up to 100 percent of a brand’s production costs against expected or confirmed orders from retailers including Walmart, Sam’s Club and Best Buy. Consumer packaged goods borrowers typically receive credit lines of $500,000 to $2.5 million, with individual draws running three to five months.
Edge Growth’s $22m First Close
Edge Growth, a South African SME investment manager, announced a first close of $22 million for its Impact Fund. The venture debt fund will invest in growth-stage businesses, typically at Series A to C funding rounds, that have proven their business models. Investment sizes will range between $1m and $4m per company.
This newsletter is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be taken as investment advice.