How worried should you be about private credit?
文章探讨了私人信贷领域日益增长的担忧。尽管私人信贷曾承诺高回报和安全性，但目前投资者正要求赎回资金，监管机构也担心恐慌蔓延，尤其是在地缘政治冲击（如特朗普总统在中东的战争）背景下。文章指出，当前局面并非2008年金融危机的重演，因为私人信贷基金结构相对简单、杠杆率较低，但部分快速增长公司的无能表现仍令人担忧。投资者最初因人工智能可能颠覆软件公司（占私人贷款很大一部分）而感到不安，随后赎回请求超出季度限制，暴露了估值问题。虽然银行相对安全，但保险公司通过复杂的证券化产品面临风险。私人股本公司的股价已大幅下跌，这反映了它们从投资能力转向以费用为基础的资产聚集模式。零售投资者对私人市场变得更加谨慎，而私人信贷基金的困境将提高整个经济的借贷成本，加剧伊朗战争对企业利润的压力，甚至可能减缓技术采纳。
Private credit promised high returns to investors and safety to financial regulators. Now investors are demanding their money back and regulators are worried about panic spreading across the financial system, just as it faces a shock from President Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East. The good news is that Wall Street is much further from the precipice than many fear. Yet all should be concerned by the ineptitude displayed by some of its fastest-growing firms and the costs their woes could impose on others.
文章开头提到，在投资者要求赎回资金、监管机构担心恐慌蔓延之际，金融系统正面临特朗普总统在中东地区战争的冲击。这暗示了地缘政治事件对金融市场情绪和稳定性的潜在影响，增加了市场的不确定性。
Over the past two decades the biggest private-equity houses have gone from mostly buying and selling companies to lending to them. In the process they have become massive. Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle and KKR manage $3.4trn of assets, compared with $800bn a decade ago. Their lending has often stayed close to home. Much of private credit involves funding private-equity deals. And of the roughly $1.5trn of private loans that are outstanding, around a third sits in funds open to individual investors.
At first investors in these funds were spooked by the realisation that nearly a third of their loans are to software firms, which could be disrupted by artificial intelligence. Now they are spooked by how spooked everyone else seems to be, including those in charge. Funds typically allow up to 5% of shareholdings to be withdrawn each quarter. Investors get out their cash by selling shares back to the fund at book value. Those values look too high. Redemption requests at the big funds have exceeded 5%, causing fund managers either to enforce the limit (as is their right, and probably their best option) or strain to please these investors by allowing more to sell.
投资者最初的担忧源于意识到近三分之一的贷款投向了可能被人工智能颠覆的软件公司。这反映了新兴技术对传统行业和投资组合的潜在风险，以及市场对技术变革速度和影响的敏感性。
The spiral will continue until fund managers can convince investors that the loans they hold are worth what they say they are. Some will struggle because investors have made up their minds; others, because the valuations really are wrong.
Failing private-credit funds are not about to bring down the rest of the financial system. Eighteen years after Wall Street collapsed spectacularly, many assume a crisis of similar magnitude must be overdue. But setting your watch to 2008 and judging every panic by that standard is the wrong way to think about risk. All financial disasters share the characteristics of complexity, leverage and borrowing that can be quickly withdrawn. Happily, the offending private-credit funds are (relatively) simple. They also have low leverage and can hobble on by giving back that 5% of investors’ capital every quarter.
文章明确指出，当前的私人信贷问题不会像2008年华尔街崩盘那样引发系统性危机。它强调了将每次恐慌都与2008年标准对比的错误，并解释了私人信贷基金在复杂性、杠杆和资金流动性方面的不同特征。
Nevertheless, private credit’s problems may yet spill over. In contrast to 2008, the worry is not the banks. Although they have made tidy profits lending to private-credit funds, they are senior lenders; investors in the funds (and in the private-equity shops that own the underlying borrowers) must be wiped out before their loans are impaired. The bigger concern this time is the insurers. They are exposed to buy-out debt through complex securitised products, and because many of them are now owned by the private-markets firms themselves.
So far, the biggest casualty has been the share prices of the private-equity houses. More than a quarter of their value has been wiped out this year. The fact that the kings of private markets should have been humbled on the public markets is ironic. Mistakes like their excessive exposure to the software industry are more likely now that they are asset-gathering giants with values based on the fees they generate, rather than their investing prowess. In future they will also face more competition from banks, which Mr Trump is deregulating.
文章提到，未来私人信贷公司将面临来自银行的更多竞争，因为特朗普总统正在放松对银行的监管。这表明政府政策对金融行业竞争格局和市场动态的直接影响，可能改变银行和私人信贷机构的角色。
Another consequence is that retail investors will be warier of private markets, just as America has settled on letting them invest their pensions in private assets. Using this deep well of capital to fund the economic activity that occurs in private markets is a worthwhile prize. Yet, at least when it comes to structures governing how investors may withdraw their money, there is a paradox. Advances in technology have increased the amount of wealth created by companies in the private markets, but at the same time hooked investors on cheap liquidity and low fees in the public markets. The two seem irreconcilable.
The final consequence is that as private-credit funds’ woes intensify, they will raise the cost of borrowing for firms across the economy, at a time when the Iran war is weighing on companies’ margins. The cost of debt in public markets has already risen from near-record low spreads over government bonds at the beginning of the year. Piles of debt being issued to fund the data-centre boom should increase it even further. In the event of a wave of defaults, like the one at end of the shale-oil boom in the mid-2010s, this might even slow the adoption of the very technology that has fuelled the boom. That really would be something to worry about.
文章末尾指出，私人信贷基金的困境将提高整个经济体的借贷成本，而此时伊朗战争正在给企业利润带来压力。这再次强调了地缘政治冲突如何通过影响能源价格、供应链和市场信心，进而对全球经济产生广泛影响。