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Banking on it

Drama and conflict ignite excitement like nothing else, whether for participants in the battle or the audience watching. As the political theorist Thomas Paine once said: “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Commentary on the relationship between banks and private credit funds sometimes leans quite heavily on this drama. 

Reading some coverage, you might come to think that over the last few years, the “glorious triumph” has belonged to private credit funds. With regulators tipping the scale against banks, non-bank lenders have managed to largely take over sponsor-backed lending in the US for companies below the $75m EBITDA line (and to some extent above that line).