PDF | Research | Week of Nov 18 2024

So far in our “Private Equity Now” series we’ve covered the various technologies available to LPs and GPs to access liquidity in this difficult environment. This week we focus on fundraising to understand how GPs are navigating with investors pining for distributions. 

Indeed, private equity fund managers are facing a landscape unlike any we’ve experienced in recent years. According to Pitchbook, the median time to close a fund is now nearly 17 months, as of September 30. That is up from 14 months in 2023 and 11 months in 2022. Those timelines extend even further for less experienced or first-time managers. 

The slow return of capital has created an imbalance between the amount raised and the supply available from investors. This imbalance is an opening to stand out in a competitive market...

The absence of realizations has hampered distributions to LPs.  

Read PDI's Report: LP Perspectives 2024 report

Respondents to a PDI survey believe that private debt will not easily give up the share it has won at the larger end of the market. 

In 2022 and 2023, as talk of private debt being in a so-called ‘golden era’ grew louder, one of the main reasons was the way in which it had achieved territorial gains at the larger end of the market – promoting itself as an alternative source of finance (and sometimes as the only game in town) at a time when the broadly syndicated market had effectively pulled up the shutters...

Contact: Andy Thomson / Private Debt Investor

After a brief pullback in the institutional calendar in the week leading up to the US election, lenders have tapped the market with a flurry of deals...

Contact: Maria Dikeos / LSEG

Within healthcare services, some of the areas that continue to see the highest levels of sponsor demand and interest, including medspa and outpatient mental health, also have a scarcity of platform-scale assets...

Contact: Garrett Black / PitchBook

Contact: Eric Rosenthal / KBRA DLD

Middle Market & Private Credit

Fitch’s Privately Monitored Middle Market Portfolio Overview − 3Q24 (Part 3)



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In the charts above, Fitch presents aggregate data for Middle Market companies that it privately rates on a monitored basis for asset managers, defined as:

·      in the area of $500 million of debt; or

·      $100 million of EBITDA or below.



The quarterly downgrade-upgrade ratio for the PMR portfolio fell to its lowest level since 2Q22...

Contact: Brad Hamner / FitchRatings

Launched Volume

New-issue Yields

Weekly Fund Flows

Weekly fund flows source: Lipper

Contact: Robert Polenberg / LevFin Insights

Debtwire Middle-Market

Under pressure: leveraged loan defaults are spiking

Annual loan defaults are soaring, with this year’s rate of 4.7% surpassing 4.5% seen during the economic slowdown in 2020 triggered by the advent of the pandemic. It also marks the highest default rate since the global financial crisis, when defaults peaked at 10.5%...

Contact: Jayjeet Sharma/ Debtwire 

Private Debt Intelligence

Private equity deal value rises above

five-year average

Read more in Preqin’s ‘Deal Flow Monitor: Q3 2024’

Private equity deal value in North America increased to $98.7bn in Q3 2023, exceeding the five-year average of $84bn, and accounting for 40.8% of all private capital deals in the region...

Contact: William Bennett-Lynch/ Preqin

Contact: Stefan Shaffer / SPP Capital Partners