China-driven M&A isn’t happening this year Download PitchBook’s Report here. North American M&A activity involving Chinese buyers has fallen off a cliff this year. That’s not a complete surprise, but it’s not often you see such swift drop-offs without something alarming going on. According to PitchBook’s just released North American M&A Report, China-driven M&A is on…
Private Debt First-Time Funds in 2019 2019 has been a slow fundraising year for private debt – so far this year just 118 funds have been closed, raising an aggregate capital of $81bn. Fund managers are finding difficult to attract investors and the private debt market remains crowded – there are currently 427 funds seeking…
Distressed debt fundraising figures no longer distressing Despite subpar returns from many such funds, the strategy continues to attract LP dollars. Distressed debt has continued its strong fundraising, with a total of $39.44 billion, or 35 percent, of the $112.69 billion that private credit funds have raised through the first three quarters of the year,…
Flight to quality continues on in the US leveraged loan market Looking at year-to-date average secondary bids along with loan volume highlights the flight to quality seen in the US loan market over the past few months. Corporates with a rating of single-B or lower peaked in 2019 monthly volume with US$24bn back in May….
Distributions – timing is everything Download PitchBook’s Report here. With illiquid asset classes like PE, it’s hard but worthwhile to try to figure out how quickly LP dollars go in and out of funds. Our latest analyst note on cash flow management focuses on distribution numbers, with interesting results for market observers and actionable data for…
Multi-regional funds hold their own in chase for capital In 2019, so far, capital pools investing in more than one global region have raised more than in 2018. Multi-regional funds – those investing across more than one geographic area – have made a comeback this year, or at least risen back in line to prior…
Private Debt Performance Slows as AUM Grows Returns for the private debt asset class as a whole have slowed over the past year, with distressed debt and direct lending funds contributing most to this slump. Over the one-, three- and five-year horizons, mezzanine funds have performed the strongest of the debt strategies, posting an annualized…
Recent investor challenged single-B deals have yet to gain traction since breaking in the US secondary market As bifurcation among credits continues, a number of recently launched deals for single-B names received significant investor pushback during syndication. Not surprisingly perhaps, none of these loans have been bid above their break price in the secondary market….
Public and private Download PitchBook’s Report here. Recent GP stake deals are giving us a growing sample size of private PE firm valuations. We already had a small set for publicly traded PE firms, and we’ve heard ad nauseum that the public markets don’t fully understand how to value firms like Blackstone or Apollo. Much of…
Another sign that the big are only getting bigger The baseline for being in the top-10 fundraises of the year increased from 2018 to 2019, signaling the growing dominance of a few firms. The overall capital collected by the top-10 fund closes this year has eclipsed the total raised by last year’s 10 largest fundraises,…