This week we look at questions from clients and friends surrounding the issue of tariffs. Not surprisingly, as we’ve discovered in our recent travels, interest in the topic has accelerated (see our Chart of the Week). The origin of the word is obscure. By one account, it derives from the Arabic “ta‘rif,” meaning “notification” or…
APAC countries each have their own path to investing in alternatives and private capital. Most key Malaysian institutions began with private equity, venture capital, and real estate. Favored PE sectors include data centers, which in 2023 represented an astounding 90% of all privately funded deals in that arena.* Others were in the consumer, industrial, and…
“Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises contribute almost 40% of Malaysia’s GDP and almost 50% of its national work force, yet only 17% of these companies have access to bank financing.” – Sources: KSP, ADM Capital. Last month our travels took us to Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, a city of about 2 million. There we met…
“Manager performance is the beta of private credit. The alpha is client support. Transparency and timeliness of information is critical, especially at the outset.” – Australian investor. As the Australian market has matured, it has geared a variety of private credit products to different investor types. These embrace institutions, family offices, high-net-worth, and ultra-high-net-worth individuals….
“When my 2-year-old opened up her toy chest, things tumbled out. She’s 15 now, so it’s a well-organized make-up box. That’s how private credit has matured here.” – Australian investor. In our travels last month to Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney, we had over twenty meetings with clients and friends that included superannuation funds, wealth management…
It had been a while since our last MENA visit, so on a recent trip there with our teams, clients and friends, the difference in levels of activity and interest around private credit was palpable. Most large sophisticated institutional investors in the Gulf, including sovereign wealth and pension funds, now have a dedicated allocation to…
The notion of a post-rate world is arguable, as anyone in the capital markets over the past two decades would attest. But with so many variables in today’s crosswinds, investors in private capital believe that, as a relative matter, the direction of interest rates is less significant than how tariff policies will roll out in the…
The proponents and beneficiaries of private capital have long recognized its virtue of being less correlated with headline risk than fixed income and public equities. But one of Covid’s most enduring financial legacies was the higher interest rate regime imposed by the Fed in 2022. While it appears their long-sought soft landing was achieved, more…
As we’ve noted, the banks and private credit managers occupy different places in the corporate finance ecosystem. That’s not to say, of course, that large corporate financings don’t represent real investment opportunities for the right buyers. Or that the expansion and evolution of private capital won’t lead to interesting and constructive solutions for a wide…
One of the frequent observations of private credit, usually couched as a complaint, is how many competitors are crowding into the asset class. In part this is due to the increasingly specialized strategies managers are employing that all fit into the PC classification. A few years back, we received a gift membership for a popular…