Howard Marks, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, Michael Arougheti, Co-Founder and CEO of Ares Management, and Amanda Lynam, Chief Credit Strategist in Goldman Sachs Research, argue that the current wave of private credit stress, including high-profile defaults, valuation concerns, and a surge in redemption requests, will reshape market share within the asset class rather than threaten its structural viability

James Zelter, President of Apollo Global Management, argues that the next wave of private capital growth will be defined not by asset class expansion but by how returns are structured and delivered to investors, in a panel at the Milken Institute 2026 Global Conference

Dina DiLorenzo, President of Guggenheim Investments, argued that operational infrastructure, not origination scale, is the defining edge in private credit

Alan Schwartz, Executive Chairman of Guggenheim Partners, warned that the private credit market is approaching a breaking point, but one the financial system can absorb without systemic damage.

Paul Taubman, Chair and CEO of PJT Partners, argues that retail capital will cease to be the growth engine for private credit assets under management.

Rob Lewin, Chief Financial Officer at KKR, argued that retail outflows from private credit are creating a compelling entry point for institutional investors.

John Sheehan and Craig Manchuck, Portfolio Managers at the Osterweis Strategic Income Fund, argue that private credit's most dangerous vulnerability is not its loan book but the liability structure of its retail-facing funds in a conversation on Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast.

OC pushes the efficient frontier out 40bps at equal risk, as $1.4T in PE capital tracks below hurdle in a post ZIRP reset.

FSB flags $2T private credit market as untested systemic risk, citing hidden leverage, opaque valuations, and deepening bank ties.

Cathrin Petty, Managing Partner, Co-Head of North American Private Equity and Global Head of Healthcare at CVC, made the case that operational execution on complex carveouts and founder partnerships is now the primary source of alpha in healthcare PE

Jeff Diehl, Managing Partner and Head of Investments at Adams Street Partners, argued that the largest private credit managers are creating systemic underwriting risk by scaling deployment far beyond what disciplined lending can support

Jon Gray, President and COO of Blackstone, and Michael Zawadzki, Global CIO of Blackstone Credit & Insurance, made the case that private credit is structurally superior to liquid fixed income as the defensive allocation in a diversified portfolio.

Jon Gray, President and COO of Blackstone, laid out the case that individual investor adoption of alternatives is still in its earliest stages and that performance, not product design, is the mechanism that drives durable asset gathering in a conversation with iCapital CEO Lawrence Calcano on The 19th Hole.

Hamilton Lane says private credit panic is overblown. Borrower fundamentals are near all time highs while public markets look stretched.

Apollo says its private credit software exposure is just ~2% of AUM. The real test comes when the credit cycle hits.

What's New Morningstar's new Manager Research report, "How Private Is Your Private Portfolio?", reveals that semiliquid private asset funds marketed as highly differentiated vehicles share striking portfolio overlap, heavy software concentration, and liquidity dynamics that make fees the real differentiator for long term performance. Why It Matters As institutional and retail capital floods into semiliquid private credit and equity vehicles, the assumption that these funds of

Large direct lending portfolios carry just 2 to 3% exposure to infrastructure deals, leaving allocators with heavy concentration in software and healthcare at the exact moment those sectors face AI disruption risk and macro uncertainty.

What's New Cliffwater's recent paper "The Arithmetic of Direct Lending" makes the case that private credit's return profile is governed by a small set of observable, measurable inputs rather than the complexity often attributed to it. Using 20+ years of CDLI data, the paper decomposes returns into income, credit gains/losses, and fees/leverage, and shows that even under extreme stress scenarios the asset class produces outcomes within a surprisingly narrow and predictable ran

Private credit's financing role remains intact despite BDC noise. GS sees expansion ahead as jumbo deals and market fluidity grow.

What's New Europe's middle market is structurally cheaper, deeper, and harder for outsiders to crack than the US — and Bridgepoint is betting its next decade of growth on that gap. On the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast, Partner and CIO Xavier Robert detailed how the firm is positioning itself as the global champion of middle market investing. With roughly $100 billion in AUM, Bridgepoint has expanded beyond private equity into US power infrastructure (via the ECP acquisition), s