Private credit firms sold a record amount of debt to themselves last year as the buyout sector’s slowdown pushed them to find new ways to generate cash from loans to companies owned by private equity.
Private lenders struck so-called continuation deals worth $15bn globally in 2025, up from almost $4bn the previous year, according to investment bank Jefferies. Such deals involve fund managers establishing new vehicles to buy loans from their old funds.
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https://www.ft.com/content/c071fa65-5517-4224-90c9-d73718165367
The sudden collapse last fall of a string of American companies backed by private credit has thrust a fast-growing and opaque corner of Wall Street lending into the spotlight.
Private credit, also known as direct lending, is a catch-all term for lending done by nonbank institutions. The practice has been around for decades but surged in popularity after post-2008 financial crisis regulations discouraged banks from serving riskier borrowers.
That growth — from $3.4 trillion in 2025 to an estimated $4.9 trillion by 2029 — and the September bankruptcies of auto-industry firms Tricolor and First Brands have emboldened some prominent Wall Street figures to raise alarms about the asset class.
JPMorgan Chase
CEO Jamie Dimon warned in October that problems in credit are rarely isolated: “When you see one cockroach, there are probably more.” Billionaire bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach a month later accused private lenders of making “garbage loans” and predicted that the next financial crisis will come from private credit.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/23/wall-street-private-credit-risk-rising.html