Benchmark prior transactions, bonds, loans or company profiles using over 300 credit metrics.

Comparables

AI transcripts & instant analysis, making earnings season easier than ever.

Earnings

A full suite of ESG data and analysis. Built for your workflow

Spot undervalued credits and potential future restructurings with our purpose-built tools.

Distressed and Restructuring

We use AI to aggregate newsflow from 2,000 sources, and deliver it to your inbox quicker than anyone else.

News

Full Financial profiles with 3 statements, KPIs, segment splits & credit metrics. All traced to source documents.

Financials

New deal analysis and covenant comparison tools, understand key risks in seconds not days.

Covenants

We've successfully predicted more than 65 price sensitive events - before they happened.

Deal predictions

Say goodbye to CTRL + F with our powerful search. Thousands of documents text searchable for any keyword or phrase.

Search

Track high yield deals from issuance through to maturity, with integrated legal, credit and ESG analysis.

High Yield Bonds

Shine a light on private markets with 9fin's news and legal analysis of syndicated loans

Leveraged Loans

21st century tech and expert analysis to help CLO teams make informed decisions faster.

Structured Credit 

Find information others can't see in one of the fastest growing corners of finance

Private Credit 

Peter Benson

The Unicrunch is our US private credit newsletter, in which we break down everything from unitranches to ABL lending. Find out more about 9fin for private credit here.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any successful financial institution is required to have a private credit fund. And today that private credit fund needs to be more than just a specialist in vanilla corporate direct lending.

Take Blue Owl’s $450m acquisition of Atalaya. The former is a big name in direct lending and regularly involved in big ticket transactions. Unitranches are its forte. Atalaya, meanwhile, has cultivated a specialty lending business — lending against hard assets rather than cash flow. Both neatly fit together like a jigsaw and expand Blue Owl’s menu of options while boosting Aatalaya’s name.

And as reported by Semafor this week, there is set to be more consolidation in the private credit space. Crestline, Waterfall, and MGG are all up for sale. MGG is a specialist in non-sponsored lending — think Encyclopedia Britannica and Burnley FC, and avoids sectors like healthcare and tech. Perfect for any firms that have a big sponsored-lending focus.

Castlelake, too, has been on the block. Again, not cash flow lending but an ABL specialist. Brookfield was in talks to buy majority ownership of the firm earlier this year, but it eventually settled on acquiring a minority stake. The real estate investment giant already has a presence in corporate direct lending through its ownership of Oaktree.

The fundamental truth is that it’s harder to scale a niche strategy of non-sponsored and ABL — the opportunities in these markets are a fraction of the number you see in the vanilla direct lending market. But it’s more important than ever to be a large fund. Last year, the top 15 fund managers in the space raised nearly 70% of all the capital available. Scale matters, especially as fundraising has been tough for smaller players.

So if you’re a bank, a hedge fund, real estate investor, or large private credit firm that has focused on corporate direct lending, it’s time to think how you can add to your overall offering — for borrowers always exploring unique financing options or institutional investors always on the hunt to diversify their investment holdings.

Can’t afford a new house as house prices continue to soar? Perhaps it’s time to make those improvements that you may have missed out on during the great enthusiasm for home improvement during the pandemic. Private credit firms are banking on many of us staying put.

This week, 9fin reported that Cerberus led a $600m facility supporting Littlejohn’s preferred equity investment in home improvement company Great Day Improvements. The proceeds helped to fund an acquisition of ELM Home & Building Solutions, an over $150m EBITDA company. The merging of companies grows an already large national direct-to-consumer firm that now provides everything from windows to gutter solutions.

Existing home sales are down over 5% year over year in the US, according to the National Association of Realtors. More and more of us will feel a greater urgency to clean the gutters or fix the garage door.

The reason housing is so expensive, or so real estate people will tell you, is simple supply and demand economics. Currently, there is not enough housing stock in areas in which people want to live. This means governments the world over, including all over the US, are concocting plans to incentivize building.

Private credit also has a plan to take advantage of that wave. Oak Hill Advisors’ $350m debt facility supporting AEA Investors’ acquisition of Nations Roof is a good example. More building means more business for commercial roofing, in both multifamily or mixed use retail.

The financing package priced at SOFR+525bps backs a commercial roofing company that likely has room to grow as development is fostered by governments. The company is currently active in over 20 states and, knowing that a PE firm is taking over, growth will be the highest priority.

The world seems pretty far removed from the cryptocurrency nadir last year when one of its poster children was found guilty of fraud and NFTs, an offshoot of the crypto-bro industry, were all but dead.

This year, the story is a little different. Bitcoin, the preeminent cryptocurrency, continues to hit record highs. The underlying technology — blockchain — that supports much of the industry just started hosting a large asset manager’s private credit fund.

This week Hamilton Lane, an investment manager with over $900bn in AUM, launched a private credit fund on the Solana blockchain. The firm’s Senior Credit Opportunities Fund is the first private credit vehicle to be launched on the platform.

Hamilton Lane’s fund originally launched in 2022 and currently has around $556m in AUM. The evergreen fund targets 10% yields.

Being on Solana allows more retail investors access to private credit. Instead of a minimum investment of $250,000, only $10,000 is needed, broadening the potential investor base.

Blockchain offers a different route to BDCs, which have been the most common way to access retail capital. Private credit firms continue to launch BDCs with Kennedy Lewis having launched one this month and multiple firms having taken theirs public earlier this year.

Hamilton Lane is building upon what some private credit firms have already attempted in incorporating these technologies. This feels like the biggest move so far in legitimizing its use.

Proskauer’s private credit default index jumps to 2.7% in Q2

Porter Airlines tries to land preferred equity injection

Carlyle weighs $3bn private loan to finance Baxter spin-out

Cerberus leads loan funding Littlejohn’s Great Day investment

Oak Hill Advisors backs $350m financing for Nations Roof

Master ConcessionAir growth strategy gets private credit backing

Porter Airlines — the company is looking to raise CA$250m in preferred equity to bolster its liquidity and pursue growth objectives

RXBenefits — the company is looking to refinance its existing debt with a roughly $900m private credit loan and possibly issue a dividend to shareholders

Wastequip — the company is looking to refinance its existing syndicated debt facilities in the private credit market

Priority Power — the energy management services company is on the auction block, marketed on $85m LTM EBITDA. Warburg Pincus has expressed interest

Blackstone Bets on Growth in Private Credit Business Outside US (BBG)

Direct Lenders Should Prepare for Private Credit Restructuring (BBG Law)

High rates, scarce exits prompt inclusion of equity warrants (PitchBook)

Private Credit Funds Identify Latin America as the Next Frontier (BBG)

Enjoyed this market wrap? Our customers receive this content ahead of the crowd — find out more about 9fin’s news and analysis.

🍪 Our Cookies

The Unicrunch — Scaling up, deals under one roof, private credit on the chain

Inorganic growth

Read all our public content for free

Recently Published

9fin raises $50m to build next generation of debt capital markets technology

Winding Up — Black Friday rush

The Unicrunch — BlackRock’s holiday shopping, LP diet trends, and downwardly mobile lenders

Taking the Credit — Holding space in M&A, feeling power in CLOs

What are you waiting for?