Case Study
Customer story: How IK Partners leverages 9fin to get a 360° view on debt capital markets
- 9fin team
•3 min read
IK Partners (“IK”) is a European mid-market private equity firm focused on investments in the Benelux, DACH, France, Nordics and the UK. Since 1989, IK has raised more than €20bn of capital and invested in over 200 European companies. IK supports companies with strong underlying potential, partnering with management teams and investors to create robust, well-positioned businesses with excellent long-term prospects.
We spoke with Thierry Aoun, a Partner with responsibility for the Capital Markets function at IK, about how he and his team leverage 9fin to capitalise on efficiency gains in this case study.
The challenge — An ever-evolving lending landscape
The Capital Markets team at IK oversees financing arrangements for portfolio companies across a wide spectrum — from broadly syndicated markets to private credit and traditional bank financing.
“Historically, information hasn’t been readily available to us in the broader press” Thierry explains. “In the past, we have had to track market activity across a variety of transaction sizes by maintaining a fairly exhaustive yet incomplete database.”
Thierry likens maintaining that database to an urban legend about the most famous bridge in California – the Golden Gate Bridge. The myth is that the bridge is so sizeable, as soon as the workers were finished painting it, they had to go back to the other end and start the job anew as it had already started to chip.
“We would turn to our database of comparable transactions. Building and maintaining that database took time and its usefulness was contingent on frequent updates — not an easy task in a fast-moving market that can lack transparency.”
It quickly became clear to Thierry and his team that they needed access to tools that could deliver accurate, timely intel to support their decision-making.
“Since implementing 9fin, we have observed significantly deeper coverage of private credit. This insight is valuable as we work on the financing of our own portfolio companies.”
The solution — immediate value with 9fin
“There were several features in 9fin that would be valuable to our work: comprehensive editorial coverage on both broadly syndicated loans and private credit, put together by a team of experienced journalists; robust analytical content; an extensive repository of transactions; and a clear, intuitive user experience” Thierry says.
A combination of content and data
“9fin did strike us as novel in its approach — differentiating itself from platforms that offer either solely editorial content or purely factual, de-contextualised news flow, to deliver something in between. Complementing this is a set of rapidly evolving functionalities, notably around documentation analysis and tracking of the latest market trends.”
A clear view on private credit
In 2024, 9fin launched BDC holdings data, offering private credit users access to comprehensive investment holdings data, all extracted from BDC quarterly filings and presented in one easy-to-search dataset.
“Since implementing 9fin, we have observed significantly deeper coverage of private credit — a challenging asset class to monitor given its inherent opacity — driven, in particular, by the platform’s systematic data mining of the BDCs. This insight has proven highly valuable as we work on the financing of our own portfolio companies.”
A way to track trends on a granular level
Launched in July 2025, 9fin’s market trends dashboard lets users instantly spot trends across primary markets, accelerating origination, new business development, and credit analysis with greater clarity and confidence.
“There has also been a welcome development to the market dashboard functionality, allowing us to track trends on a granular level by geography, sector, ratings, and more.”
“9fin has become one of the key enablers in our work, allowing us to perform at the level our investors expect us to”
The result — A 360-degree view on debt capital markets
The team used to track marketing activity in a database which had to be manually maintained and updated — but this is no longer the case.
“9fin has been instrumental in giving us access to high-quality analytics, which we leverage to structure our transactions intelligently and operate with greater efficiency” says Thierry.
“In an industry where momentum is capital, having access to the right insights at the right time is critical — and 9fin has become one of the key enablers in our work, allowing us to perform at the level our investors expect us to.”
