Back in January we featured content from Lincoln International’s Valuations and Opinion team [link]. Topics included Covid’s impact on private credit terms, structures and pricing.

Shortly thereafter the team reached out to road test a loan index created from Lincoln’s quarterly valuations of 2,400 private companies. Metrics included total return, price, spread, and yield to maturity.

Since that conversation, Lincoln managing director Larry Levine has been working on enhancements. Private debt practitioners have noted the shortage of credible benchmarks against which to compare various managers’ performance. Leveraging its valuation expertise across its broad middle market portfolio affords Lincoln the opportunity to contribute meaningful data to investors.

We caught up with Mr. Levine recently to ask about various aspects of Lincoln’s Index.

Larry, could you give us more detail about the composition of the Index, and why it’s significant?