Garrett Stephen, Senior Managing Director, Co-Head of Origination at Napier Park Global Capital talks to CJ Doherty, Director of Analysis at LSEG LPC, about private credit in 2025 and what is in store for 2026. "I'd say on the AI side, it's really a big focus at the business level for us on making sure that we're implementing AI more broadly within our work streams to stay ahead of the curve,” Stephen said. "If you have a large workforce and maybe not every individual within that workforce is productive, and you can utilize technology to make your core employees more productive, that potentially could cause some of that workforce to decline in those mature or declining businesses."

Chris Rust, Co-Head of European Private Credit at investment manager Ninety One join CJ Doherty, Director of Analysis at LSEG LPC, to discuss non-sponsored lending opportunities in the European middle market. "There certainly are a lot of misconceptions about the non-sponsored lending strategy. One of them is that non-sponsored borrowers are inherently riskier than sponsored borrowers," Rust said. "Oftentimes there's a view that they're smaller businesses and therefore they're also less credit worthy, not as good credits. And in general, there is in some parts of the market a view, simply put, that it is a riskier or high-risk strategy."

Loan market veteran Tom Newberry, Chief Credit Officer & Executive Chairman of direct lending at Sound Point Capital Management sits down with CJ Doherty, Director of Analysis at LSEG LPC to discuss the US middle market direct lending landscape, providing insight on deal flow, pricing, fundraising and portfolio company performance. "Direct lending deal volumes were down somewhere between 10% and 40% in the first half of 2025," Newberry said. "This obviously contrasts fairly dramatically with what everyone expected to be a banner year for acquisition activity."

Michael Gross, co-founder and co-Chief Executive Officer of SLR Capital Partners, joins CJ Doherty to share his thoughts on private credit and BDCs, including whether the ‘golden age’ of private credit is coming to an end. “The benefits of private credit obviously is speed to market, flexible structuring,” Gross said. “I do think you will see an increased level of defaults over the next couple of years in traditional private credit lending portfolios.”

LSEG LPC's Maria Dikeos talks with Barry Bobrow, Head of Credit Markets for Regions Business Capital and founder and chairman of Asset Based Capital, a leading conference on asset based lending, about similarities and differences of the asset based loan arranged in the bank loan market vs the direct lending market. “If done what I would call the right way,” Bobrow said, “asset based loans have a very low loss rate, a high recovery rate, relative to the broader category of leveraged lending.”

Connor Fitzgerald, Portfolio Manager at Wellington Management, joins LSEG LPC’s CJ Doherty to discuss current conditions in the corporate bond market. "I think the Trump administration is in a challenging spot right now," Fitzgerald said. "While we tend to agree with some of the long term objectives that they're trying to achieve, we think the risk that the administration may be under-appreciated a little bit is that if we get too aggressive with some of our trading partners by way of tariffs that their response will be to liquidate the capital account." 

CJ Doherty sits down with David Ells, Partner and Portfolio Manager at Ares Management and Ryan Moreno, Partner and Co-head of Leveraged Finance at DLA Piper, to discuss the intersection of private credit and insurance company capital. “The first thing about being an insurance company is that everything is viewed through a lens of capital,” Ells said. “You have to allocate capital against everything that you own.”

Arek Maczka from Ropes & Gray joins host Chris Piccirillo to provide insight on debt portability provisions. Arek explains the concept of portability along with its purpose and benefits, outlines customary terms and conditions, and gives us his views on today’s market landscape and whether portable capital structures are here to stay. "Portability has become increasingly normalized over the past few years," Maczka said. "I agree that it does tend to ebb and flow, especially in the syndicated markets."

Frank Benhamou from Cheyne Capital joins host CJ Doherty to shed light on the Significant Risk Transfer (SRT) Market. "What we're seeing is an expansion both in terms of count, in terms of jurisdiction, as well as asset classes that it's being used on," Benhamou said. "So that create effectively a new opportunity."

Mustafa Adil, Head of Islamic Finance at LSEG, joins CJ Doherty to discuss the basic tenets of Islamic Financing and looks ahead to 2025. “The market has been growing substantially in the core markets in in which it operates,” said Adil. “There are 57 countries that have introduced Islamic finance regulations and where governments are actively supporting the development of Islamic finance.”

Host CJ Doherty speaks with Brian Himot, Head of Structured Capital at Strategic Value Partners, about capital solutions lending in both the US and Europe. "We think of ourselves as fitting in the space that is between traditional direct lending and private equity," said Himot. "There are a lot of opportunities that present themselves at different times through the cycle and when you have an evergreen strategy like ours, you need to have flexibility."

Host CJ Doherty sits down with Ben Radinsky, Partner at HighVista Strategies to discuss annual recurring revenue (ARR) loans and how they allow lenders to facilitate the financing of growth-stage companies. "ARR loans, what you're doing is you're trying to isolate cash flows that you actually know with high certainty will exist overtime," Radinsky said. "You can predict what that cash flow looks like in terms of ultimate profitability and because of that, you can have very tight covenants as a lender."

John Kerschner, Head of U.S. Securitized Products & Portfolio Manager at Janus Henderson Investors joins CJ Doherty to discuss the growing CLO ETF and broader securitized market. "Securitized products are issued at the short end of the yield curve between one and five years," said Kerschner. "Now that the yield curve is inverted, meaning the short end has higher yields than the long end, that makes the overall yields of securitized products look very attractive."

Alex Gorokhovskiy, Head of Direct Lending and Venture Debt at Deutsche Bank, joins host CJ Doherty to discuss current conditions in the US direct lending market and the outlook for the remainder of 2024. "There's consumer health that's ever evolving," said Gorokhovskiy. "Sponsors are now focused on making differentiated investments as opposed to paying the highest multiple for the next best asset."

The huge growth in AI applications and data consumption is driving the need for financing of digital assets. Host CJ Doherty sits down with IFR Senior Reporter Richard Leong to discuss the demand for financing in this asset class. "Private credit and insurers are stepping in to provide longer term capital to fund this tremendous amount of money needed," said Leong. "For the capital markets...just increasing use of securitization to term out loans for these players.

Host CJ Doherty sits down with David Brooks and Alice Cavalier, Partners & Co-Heads of Capital Solutions at Arcmont Asset Management, to discuss capital solutions lending and the outlook for the rest of 2024. "Loans have been up about 250% year to date and accounting for about 60% of the market as of last week and bond issuance has increased as well significantly," said Cavalier. "People are busy, more bullish on M&A."

Host CJ Doherty sits down with John Wright, Global Head of Credit at Bain Capital Credit, to discuss current conditions in the US CLO market and what’s ahead in the remainder of 2024. "Coming into this year, we're seeing much greater interest and much greater willingness on behalf of the banks to underwrite loans," said Wright. "That's driven by strength in the secondary market and the new issue market for leveraged loans."

David Puchowski, Director of Analysis at LSEG LPC joins CJ Doherty to discuss the key trends that shaped the direct lending market in 2023 and preview what is in store for 2024. "59% of total US LBO loan volume was done in the direct lending market," said Puchowski. "That was the first time that direct took the majority over the syndicated market."

Noelle Sisco, Managing Director and Portfolio Strategist at Napier Park joins CJ Doherty to discuss the outlook for the structured credit market as we head into 2024. “The big question mark for the U.S. consumer will be the trajectory of unemployment,” said Sisco. “Going forward into 2024, on the corporate side, we expect to see a continuation of elevated defaults with lower than historical recovery levels as we saw in 2023.”

Host CJ Doherty and Dan Lee, partner at Comvest Credit Partners, discuss the current lending landscape in the US lower middle market. “The lower middle market generally has held up, volumes have been more steady,” Lee said. “The trends in the lower middle market…tend to follow the larger market but to be not quite as volatile.” Check out Lending Lowdown episode 18 wherever you get your podcasts.