Pod Insights Odd Lots Blackstone's Michael Zawadzki on How Private Credit Got so Big About this episode We talk all the time about private credit. And we increasingly talk about it from the perspective of the AI buildout, and how all of these datacenters are being financed. But why did the space get so big in the first place, and what does its history indicate for the future of the asset class? On this episode, we speak with Michael Zawadzki, the Global CIO for Blackstone Credit and Insurance. Michael’s been with the firm since 2006, and built its private credit from the ground up. He talks about what it took to succeed in the space, the advantages that accrue to large players, and why private credit has played such an important role in financing AI infrastructure. Read more:Private Credit Firms Push New Funds in Bid to Tap Retiree MoneyBlackRock’s HPS Makes Its First Asia Investment After Merger Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots NewsletterJoin the conversation: discord.gg/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript 10,334 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Tracy Alloway? There are some market stories where you want every detail. Joe and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis. But sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and just want to know what's moving markets fast. That's the Barclays Brief Podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and Research get you up to speed on what's happening and what to watch next. Concise, focused, and brief. Search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.
0:26 Speaker 01 This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw, innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting
1:08 Speaker 01 and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors, and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at chatgpt.com.
1:52 Speaker 01 Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news.
2:07 Tracy Alloway? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
2:11 Joe Weisenthal? And I'm Joe Weisenthal.
2:12 Tracy Alloway? Joe, I keep thinking about that Sam Altman hype cycle kind of phrase, the whole it's over and then we're so back thing. And obviously, he was talking about AI and how people feel about AI. But I think you could apply it to a bunch of different markets at the moment. So AI, obviously, but also private credit.
2:31 Joe Weisenthal? Totally.
2:31 Tracy Alloway? Think back to the end of last year, right? We had all the JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon's proverbial cockroaches emerging from private credit and people started to get really worried. Fast forward to January 2026, and a lot of those concerns seem to have faded into the background.
2:47 Joe Weisenthal? Right. You wrote that thing, right? Like, spreads everywhere are super tight. And already, we know that the the stock market is up for the year, but credit markets off to a very strong start of all flavors, from what I understand.
2:58 Tracy Alloway? Right. Stock markets stealing all the spotlight. But if you look at the corporate bond market, now, this is the public bond market, not private, but spreads are at basically historic tights. I think the the high yield index is starting at its tightest level ever in the history of the index for the year. This is crazy. But it also highlights an important point, which is that spreads and returns are all relative.
3:20 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
3:20 Tracy Alloway? Right? And so if the public market is absolutely booming, that could be a good thing for private credit, but also private credit competes with the public market, right? So if you're getting pretty good returns in public credit, leveraged loans, something like that, maybe you're not going into private credit as much as you used to.
3:37 Joe Weisenthal? What if you found a house that just had one cockroach? That would be, could you imagine?
3:41 Tracy Alloway? There's never one cockroach. That's the point.
3:43 Joe Weisenthal? There had to have been a first cockroach that enters the house. You get it really quickly and then you don't have a cockroach problem.
3:49 Tracy Alloway? Did I ever tell you I hate cockroaches so much? First of all, the first Japanese word I ever relearned when I moved back to Japan as like a 14 year old was gokibori hoi hoi, because I had to go down to the local convenience store and buy cockroach hotels because the entire apartment was infested. And secondly, I hate cockroach so much, I once read an entire book about cockroaches, just to know my enemy.
4:16 Joe Weisenthal? Wow.
4:17 Tracy Alloway? It was like 300 pages on cockroaches.
4:19 Joe Weisenthal? Should we get the author on the podcast?
4:21 Tracy Alloway? It was actually a really good book. It was a sort of like cultural and scientific study of the history of cockroaches. But anyway, we are getting massively off topic. Shall I introduce our guest? We do, in fact, have the perfect guest. All right, so we're going to be talking all things private credit, including how private credit is relating to the AI space at the moment. We're speaking with Michael Zawadzki, also known as Zee. He is the Global Chief Investment Officer for Blackstone Credit and Insurance. So, Zee, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
4:51 Speaker 03 Wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me.
4:53 Tracy Alloway? So I am told by your lovely Blackstone representatives that over the last 20 years, you have grown Blackstone's credit franchise into the largest business by assets at Blackstone. How hard was that? Were you just sort of like riding a wave of corporate issuance?
5:10 Speaker 03 Well, let's talk about a few things that have happened here. Great. You know, I often get asked about this growth of private credit, and I think there's a misconception that that growth was driven by excess risk-taking. But when you actually step back and think about what's happened in the market, you basically had a innovative breakthrough that changed the way business was done that was better for all market participants. The way I like to analogize it to is what happened with Amazon in the retail space, right? Before Amazon, if you wanted to go buy something, you had to go to the store. But Amazon kind of took out that middleman and brought you, the consumer, directly to the manufacturer. And in the process, created something that was simpler, more efficient, better for the economy, more transparent. What's private credit done? It's done the same thing.
5:55 Speaker 03 It's brought the borrower right up directly to our investors' capital. We sometimes call it this farm-to-table model, right? What have you done in that process? You've cut out all the middlemen, all the syndication, all the trading desks, all the stuff that led to leakage along the way. And in the process, you've built something that was better for all market participants. If you're a borrower, you get to speak directly to your lender. You get a customized solution. You get speed, certainty of execution. If you're an investor, you capture all of that excess leakage in the form of higher returns, and that's been the case for the last 20 years. And by the way, if you're the financial markets, you have an ecosystem that is less levered, more asset liability management, brings more financial stability to the overall ecosystem.
6:37 Speaker 03 When you have something that's really good for all market participants, it tends to grow a lot, and that's what's happened in private credit.
6:43 Joe Weisenthal? What is the equivalent of like, in this analogy, which I really like, what is the equivalent of the web, right? So the reason Amazon could cut out the physical bookstore or the various other retailers, et cetera, is because the internet exists and that creates, solves some information problems, et cetera. How would you describe the sort of like, the thing that exists now such that so many different middlemen and so forth can be cut out?
7:09 Speaker 03 Scale.
7:10 Joe Weisenthal? Okay.
7:10 Speaker 03 Scale, right? The reason we couldn't do what we do today 20 years ago
7:16 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
7:16 Speaker 03 is because we didn't have the capital base. We couldn't write a billion dollar plus deal. Here's an interesting fact. Before 2021, there were only $5 billion plus private credit deals done ever. Since 2021, 100 plus. And we at Blackstone have done most of them. So what does that mean? We have the scale of capital to actually solve the problems for our clients. We have the breadth of team to go out and cover the market and bring these solutions direct to our borrowers. And then the other thing that's happened is the expansion of private credit beyond what a lot of people think of it as, which is middle market sponsored back direct lending into what we call the real economy, right? Taking what is a $2 trillion market today
7:58 Speaker 03 and thinking about a 30-plus trillion dollar addressable market when you think about areas like private investment grade, real assets, asset-backed finance. And so the other big piece of this is just the massive expansion in the addressable market that's come about.
8:13 Tracy Alloway? So I take the point about, you know, customized financing solutions and bringing investors closer to capital and all of that. But at the same time, like, the concern is that as the space grows, competition for deals increases. And that's when you start to see not just potentially lower spreads, but also more leverage. And we have seen, you know, some first liens that are now uni-tranches and things that would normally spark a little bit of worry. Is that something that you're seeing in the market?
8:45 Speaker 03 Well, it's funny. Look, I've been doing private credit for two decades. I think back to the deals that we were first doing in private credit 20 years ago. And I would tell you, I don't know that a single one of them would pass our investment committee today. They were small, they were cyclical. They were basically the stuff that banks wouldn't do. Fast forward to today, think about the average direct lending deal we do. It's a $200 million EBITDA business. It's 40% loan to value. Pre-GFC loan to values on deals were 65% plus. And so when I think about the risk posture of a senior secured loan today, it feels pretty good relative to history. And then that needs to be combined with the fact that this opportunity in investment-grade
9:29 Speaker 03 private credit, I would say is the fastest growing opportunity we see in credit at Blackstone.
9:35 Tracy Alloway? Right, so this is the other new thing that's happening is IG private credit. So, you know, private credit extended to companies with very good balance sheets, not junk rated, has become more of a thing. It's going mainstream and a lot of that is driven by AI issuance and tech-related issuance. Talk more about what you're seeing in that space.
9:53 Speaker 03 Well, I think that's a big part of it, right? Anytime you see a significant need for capital, which we obviously see in the data center build out and then connected to that, all the energy, power and infrastructure that needs to accompany that, you see huge capital needs and markets that need that much capital need to access all available options. And that includes public credit, but that also includes private credit. Morgan Stanley put out a piece late last year that estimated that $800 billion of private credit alone is needed to finance the digital infrastructure build out over the next five years. Okay, so that's a massive number. I think what gets missed when people think about the financing element of financing
10:36 Speaker 03 a data center, for example, is we're financing 15, 20-year take-or-pay contracts with some
10:45 Joe Weisenthal? The take-or-pay contract?
10:46 Speaker 03 Meaning, think about a triple net lease contract. No matter what your usage is, no matter what your operating costs are, you're getting a fixed sum every single month from your tenant and they can't get out of that contract.
10:57 Joe Weisenthal? Okay.
10:57 Speaker 03 Okay, and you're getting that from some of the highest quality credit counterparties in the world, right? Hyperscalers are the tenants in most of the data centers today. And so as I sit with my credit hat on, if I can lend against some of the best counterparties in the world. Against a known defined stream of cash flows. And I can do that with 150 to 200 basis points of excess spread versus like rated public credit.
11:26 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah. Well, sorry, explain that. So we, the most creditworthy companies in the world are these cash flow gushers, the big tech companies, et cetera. What is the, I still don't quite get, what is the advantage for them of the private credit market? Spreads, as you mentioned, are wider. They can access the bond market. They do it all the time, or they certainly can. So what is, what does private credit solve for the metas of the world and the apples of the world such that they can't borrow versus the public credit market?
11:58 Speaker 03 Customization.
11:59 Joe Weisenthal? Okay.
11:59 Speaker 03 Speed, certainty, flexibility, bringing that solution direct to the borrower. Sometimes there are certain elements in terms of the timing or whatever the case may be that requires a private solution confidentiality.
12:11 Joe Weisenthal? Can you just explain that a little further? Like, what is it about these projects specifically? When you say like customization?
12:16 Tracy Alloway? If people say customization all the time, give us a specific example.
12:20 Speaker 03 Yeah. Well, sometimes there's a construction element. Okay. So you need to fund over time as opposed to funding all of your capital day one. That's a good example, right? Sometimes you need to structure in a certain way in terms of the timing of the cash flows. That's another example. So there are things that are needed that don't necessarily increase credit risk, but they don't fit the cookie cutter mold of a straight away investment grade public bond.
13:03 Tracy Alloway? There are some market stories where you want every detail. Joe and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and just want to know what's moving markets fast. That's the Barclays Brief Podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and Research get you up to speed on what's happening and what to watch next. Concise, focused, and brief. Search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.
13:30 Speaker 01 This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting
14:11 Speaker 01 and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors, and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at ChatGPT.com.
14:53 Tracy Alloway? So this might be a difficult question to answer, but when you look at your own portfolio, your own very large portfolio, can you give like a rough estimate of how much AI exposure has increased over the years?
15:05 Speaker 03 Well, that's a fascinating question, right? Because I tend to think about AI exposure pretty broadly, right? Because I think AI will impact not just data centers and the direct, you know, first derivative impact, but the second derivative impact, the third derivative impact.
15:25 Tracy Alloway? So you're looking at companies that could be disrupted as well?
15:28 Speaker 03 We're looking at it all, and we have been looking at it all. And this is, this is part of working at Blackstone, right? Like, we have unbelievable insights into what's going on all around the globe in all of these markets, not just within our credit business that has 5,000 plus borrowers, but our private equity business, our infrastructure business, our real estate business. We happen to own a couple of the largest data center developers in the world. We have a huge operating team that helps companies implement AI capabilities, help them play offense and defense when needed. And so we leverage all of these resources. And I think about AI impact across almost every business in our portfolio to varying degrees. But I think you have to be front footed in thinking about that as an investor.
16:08 Tracy Alloway? What about direct exposure to AI?
16:11 Joe Weisenthal? Forget about second to reverse.
16:12 Tracy Alloway? I take the point, but like the reason I'm asking is because there are some concerns around concentration limits at places like insurers.
16:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, look, we have over $500 billion of assets in credit at Blackstone. And I would tell you like the, the amount of direct data center exposure is a small minority of that. It would not rise to the level of something where any of our clients would feel like they have concentration.
16:36 Joe Weisenthal? What about in terms of setting aside like formal concentration limits? Just in terms of like on a day to day business right now or over the last year, how much of new, new activity would you say is related to either sort of data centers? Or maybe some of the power, uh, the power financing that is also needed for data centers?
16:59 Speaker 03 Look, um, I would tell you it's a material portion of what we're doing because it is such a capital intensive, yeah, credit intensive part of the market.
17:08 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
17:09 Speaker 03 But when I think about everything we're doing across our business and credit, it doesn't, it doesn't screen as something that's, you know, significantly overweight. Like if I think about what we're doing in our private investment grade business, that's a real asset strategy broadly defined, right? That includes obviously digital infrastructure and includes energy and power, but it includes residential mortgages, which is a massive asset class. It includes equipment finance. We just announced a deal recently, um, to do, to do an aircraft engine partnership. And frankly, I'd say the single biggest thing that it includes is what we call corporate solutions. And these are large scale customized private credit partnerships.
17:52 Speaker 03 With public investment-grade companies. And so recently, we did a deal with Rogers up in Canada where we did a $5 billion financing for them against their network infrastructure backhaul. We then did a deal late last year with Sempra Infrastructure to help them build out an LNG project. And we're seeing that not just in the US, we're seeing that globally. We announced the deal yesterday, in fact, with Ahold, the European supermarket company, to help expand their logistics footprint. And so I would tell you, the biggest theme I see across our private investment-grade business is this notion of what we call corporate solutions.
18:29 Tracy Alloway? What's it like sourcing deals at the moment? So Blackstone, obviously very big, so I imagine people are coming to you constantly. But at the same time, one of the things we heard when the private credit market was very, very hot was there's a lot of competition for deals, right? And everyone wants in on certain financing transactions. So what's it like?
18:50 Speaker 03 You've got to take it market by market, right? We were just talking about private investment-grade corporate solutions, some of these big infrastructure credit areas. I would tell you, in that market, there is more demand for capital than there are players like Blackstone with the scale to actually meet those needs. And so that is a market where I would tell you, we have robust deal activity, and that is a market where I see a lot of excess spread. I know you mentioned earlier that spreads are tight. That's an area where I would say spreads are actually quite attractive, right? If you think about public IG spreads today are 80 basis points. If you can make 250 basis points in like-for-like credit-rated risk, like, that's a lot of relative excess spread. And that's happening because the demand for capital relative to the supply of capital
19:34 Speaker 03 is quite attractive, and that's showing up for us as lenders. I'd say in the direct lending market, that's a market where spreads have tightened in sympathy with the liquid sub-investment-grade markets, but the excess spread remains, right? That excess spread of a couple hundred basis points persists. I think what is helping is you are seeing this increase in deal activity. We saw very strong M&A activity in the back half of last year. If I look at our Q4 pipeline, it's actually up 25% versus what it was at this time last year. And so I think we are optimistic about a strong recovery in deal activity. That will help, on your point, in terms of sourcing deals in that market specifically.
20:16 Speaker 03 I think the other thing that's really important, and you asked this question around, how do we scale a business? Part of it is not just waiting and sitting for the phone to ring. A huge part of what we do is think about the thematic areas within all of Blackstone, not just credit, that we want to deploy capital in. And digital infra, energy and power, those are good examples in the investment grade space. But there are also examples in the sub-investment grade space, life sciences, utility services. And what our team does is we proactively identify these companies and pitch them customized solutions. And because we have the scale of capital to actually solve that problem, we can do that. We did a deal late last year with a company called Signant Health in the life sciences space.
21:00 Speaker 03 A billion dollar plus transaction that we led, how did we do that? Well, we had financed their number one competitor. We had followed this loan because we had held it in our liquid book. And so we had the idea, hey, let's call this company and say, you should do a private loan. And that's where the ideaation comes. And that's where the differentiation in the market comes. A lot of people can pick up the phone. Not a lot of people can create their own ideas and actually effectuate them. And I think that's something we're uniquely good at.
21:26 Joe Weisenthal? Everything is just sort of like scale and power laws and compounding return from having grown and having The big get bigger. The big get bigger. It's really such an extraordinary thing and we see it in tech, but we also clearly see it in finance. I think with like, you know, the percentage of market share that accrues to the biggest players. Clearly an advantage. Obviously want to talk more about the industry overall. Going back to, you know, Tracy mentioned that we're so, it's so over, we're so back, we're so Yeah. So cycle. So at the end of last year, there were two things.
22:03 Joe Weisenthal? There were like two like kind of blowups.
22:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:06 Joe Weisenthal? In, but both were, both relate to autos. So Trichlor, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it. Try.
22:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:13 Joe Weisenthal? You got it.
22:14 Tracy Alloway? That's one of those words where I feel like very stupid pronouncing it the right way.
22:19 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah, I do too. Tricolore.
22:21 Tracy Alloway? Yeah.
22:21 Joe Weisenthal? And I'm like, should I just say tricolor?
22:23 Tracy Alloway? Yeah.
22:23 Joe Weisenthal? Like, I don't, so there was a tricolor and then first brands, which I'm pretty sure I'm pronouncing correctly. And then there was like, so that was like in the auto space. And then there was all this stuff that went viral for about five minutes. Something about the chips and maybe they're going to depreciate faster than people expected. A bunch of people are going to be holding the bag. And I won't bracket that out aside.
22:42 Speaker 03 Okay.
22:42 Joe Weisenthal? You get those blowups in the auto area. Jamie Dimon comes out with the cockroaches. What was your read on that moment? Was there reason to think that there are more tricolores? I just want to say that. I like saying it.
22:56 Speaker 03 You do it well.
22:57 Joe Weisenthal? Thank you. Are there more tricolores out there?
22:59 Speaker 03 I would tell you when all of that was going down.
23:01 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
23:02 Speaker 03 We were scratching our heads. And the biggest reason we were scratching our heads were all of those examples were bank led, bank syndicated, bank underwritten deals that somehow got confused with private credit. And this is the biggest frustration for us because we looked at those deals and we said, hey, one of the advantages of private credit is you can actually do private level due diligence. You can get access to management team. You can do weeks of work. You can get private access to information. And so one of our observations there was there was this misconception. And that's why we think it's so important to continue to educate on the distinctions between public credit and private credit. And those situations were public credit. I think the other thing that I think people maybe, maybe don't appreciate is while private credit has gotten a lot of attention recently, private credit's been around for a long time.
23:44 Speaker 03 You could look at 20 year returns in private credit and you can see that they've outperformed liquid credit by several hundred basis points over 20 years through cycles. Also, you can look at the fact that realized losses over that 20 year period for the industry have been 1%. And so I think we look to the data, we look to the clarification. But then I think the last thing that's also important to highlight here is
24:08 Speaker 03 Defaults happen in sub-investment grade credit. I think this is the other thing that I think gets missed. People see a headline about a credit issue. We have thousands of credit in our portfolios. Some of them are going to have issues. That is normal. If you look at the long-term default rate in the leveraged loan market, in the public high-yield market, it's 3%. These things happen. We account for them in our underwriting. We account for them in how we mark our portfolio. And most importantly, we have the resources to deal with those situations. We have operating people. We've got a big workout team. And if we do have challenges in our book, I think to your point on scale, Joe, having the strength of Blackstone, the resource and intellectual capital of Blackstone,
24:51 Speaker 03 to actually support those companies and drive good outcomes for our investors over term, that's what matters.
24:57 Joe Weisenthal? Just, I take your point about the 20-year returns, but you know, 20 years ago, the private credit industry barely existed, right? And then we've basically had a 17-year bull market, except for five minutes in 2020, a 17-year bull market in risk assets. So I don't think it's crazy to say like, yes, the returns, they're real, they deliver, the defaults are low, defaults happen. But I don't think it's totally crazy to wonder if you're at turning points because there's, to some extent, you can only take a 20-year track record so far if 17 years of them were in more or less a non-stop bull market.
25:37 Speaker 03 So here's what I see. First off, what I think will happen in the market is that you will continue to see private credit grow and you will continue to see strong private credit performance. That said, you're right. If I look forward versus looking back, I think it's reasonable to believe that you will see more dispersion in the asset class. You will see some players underperform. You will see some players have higher losses. I don't think that means the entire asset class will face challenges because the model like we started with, that Amazon analogy, that still persists. The excess spread versus liquid markets, that is durable. The way our clients access Private credit and all of these new areas beyond direct lending were at the very, very
26:22 Speaker 03 beginning of that very, very long road. And so I think the long-term thesis for private credit is intact. By the way, you don't see massive ways of defaults outside of recessions and it doesn't feel like to me we're headed into a recession. When I look at corporate earnings growth, when I look at where consumers are, when I look at fiscal and monetary stimulus, none of that points to recession to me. And so when I look forward, I don't see we, I don't see this big turning point for the industry. I see continued growth in the industry, but what I do see is more dispersion, which is a good thing. If you think about all established asset classes, you have top quartile managers and you have bottom quartile managers.
27:04 Speaker 03 And so I think the asset class will be a lot more about who is better at originating deals? Who is better at managing challenges in their portfolio? Who has the broadest aperture to identify areas within credit broadly defined? Where clients can deploy, where there is excess spread, where there is better risk adjusted returns. I think that's the era we're heading into and I would say we strongly embrace that era.
27:28 Tracy Alloway? Okay. So you don't see lots of defaults coming up, but what about liability management exercises or just restructuring debt? Because this is something that comes up occasionally. If you look at the default rate for private credit, I think officially it's below 2%, something like that. But if you add back in the liability management exercises that we've seen at places like First Brands,
27:52 Tracy Alloway? it goes higher. I think it goes to like 5% or something like that. Would you expect more companies to be restructuring debt as this dispersion effect maybe feeds through?
28:01 Speaker 03 Well, I think there's two pieces I want to unpack there. One, this whole notion of liability management. It really is a public market phenomenon and it exists in the public markets because public credit documents are really weak. Right? They don't have the same covenant protections that you have in private credit. And so you can have debt layered in front of you. You can have collateral stripped. That's what's happened in a lot of these situations in the public markets. Fortunately, in private credit, the documents are more protective. And so I think you will see less of that aggressive behavior in the private credit markets, certainly versus the public credit markets. The second thing I would say, Tracy, is the default is just the beginning. What really matters to clients are losses, right?
28:42 Speaker 03 Because the strength of a private credit document allows you to get to a table and negotiate with the owner for maybe more equity. Sometimes we have to take control of the company and we can use all of the resources of Blackstone to improve that company and actually deliver a strong outcome for our clients. And so I think those are the two points I would focus on. Yes, you will see defaults, but the question is, over time, what is the loss experience for investors? And that's something I think we have a lot of conviction in.
29:11 Joe Weisenthal? Okay, so the other thing besides the first branch and first brands and three color blowups.
29:17 Tracy Alloway? You just want to keep saying that.
29:18 Joe Weisenthal? I'm gonna say it like 10 more times. Was this anxiety about, you know, the quality of some of these data center findings. Like, oh, the chip's gonna be as valuable as people think. And, you know, actually, I was just looking up like some of the credit default swaps on Oracle, actually, basically continuing to hit new highs. CoreWeave, which is another one that people are watching a lot, that's actually come in a bit. So maybe, I don't know, people chilled out a little bit. But from the capital provider, the lenders, what is the appetite right now for AI or related infrastructure financing in the wave of some of these hiccups and what we see in like the CDS market for what might be some proxies for this kind of stuff?
30:00 Speaker 03 Look, I think the nature of the risk matters, right? I don't want to paint it with a broad brush because you hit it. The type of collateral matters, who your counterparty matters. For us, whether we're financing chips, we're financing a data center, we don't want to take residual value risk, right? I don't view that as credit risk. So if I can invest in chips, if I can invest in a data center that has investment grade Counterparty risk and my debt will fully be repaid inside of that contractual agreement, whether it's triple net or whatever. And I don't have to take residual value risk. I don't care what that data center is worth in year 25. I don't care what those chips are worth in year seven. That's really good risk. I think when you confine it to that, which is what we are doing,
30:45 Speaker 03 I think that's quite attractive. Will folks take that next layer of risk? They might, but you need to make
30:52 Joe Weisenthal? Do you see though, any pullback like in some of the, you know, the less triple net, whatever? They like say, okay, January 2026, first January 2025, any anxiety? Because we know that there is still incredible demand for the build out, right? It's this multi-year, multi-trillion dollar thing. From your perspective right now, how strong is the capital base for that build out? Has it changed at all?
31:20 Speaker 03 I think when you have the contractual protections that I'm highlighting, I think the demand is there now.
31:25 Joe Weisenthal? Has there been some change since 2025?
31:27 Speaker 03 I would tell you that because the demand for capital is so significant and bigger than the supply of available capital, when you see that happen, you see spreads tend to widen. That's a healthy thing. That's a good thing for the markets. And I think some of those deals that don't have the protections that I highlighted, they have a harder time getting done in the credit markets and you see them get funded in the equity markets. I think both of those things are healthy. I think when I take a big step back, there is a lot of chatter about this market, but we are firm believers in the impact of AI. And I think the bigger risk is underestimating the impact of it on your broader portfolio like I was alluding to before.
32:05 Tracy Alloway? What was the fourth quarter actually like for you and what sort of questions were you getting from investors? Cause we know, you know, some other private credit players like Blue Owl got a bunch of redemptions. Did you see similar pressures?
32:18 Speaker 03 Look, anytime you tend to see some of the press that you highlighted, it's natural to get questions and we embrace those questions and we address them with the facts that I just highlighted. I think for us, we continue to see very strong demand for credit. I was around the world, I think twice in the fourth quarter, meeting with our clients around the world. And I would tell you, in aggregate, they want more private credit, right? Our institutional clients, I think year to date through 930, inflows were up over 50% versus where they were a year prior. We held a forum with many of our big clients late last year to discuss relative value and risks in the credit market. And actually,
33:01 Speaker 03 it was great for me because it was a way I could actually survey our clients on their views. And I would tell you, they continue to be very bullish on private credit. If anything, they feel under allocated to private credit as an asset class. And so I think momentum will continue.
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34:53 Joe Weisenthal? This sort of touches on one of my favorite things to talk about, like sort of portfolio construction. But for these mega clients, they say, okay, we're under allocated, we want more of this. What is it that in their broad portfolio allocation, the characteristics of private credit are solving for them right now?
35:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, look, yield, especially in uncertain
35:14 Joe Weisenthal? Everyone loves yield.
35:15 Speaker 03 Right? Everybody loves yield. And I think even with spreads tighter and with rates coming off a little bit, even with that, the yield in credit relative to the earnings yield of the S and P is as attractive as been over a very long period of time. So credit remains attractive. I think when valuations are expensive, like they are across the world today in most asset classes, being defensive at the top of the capital structure really matters. Diversification, right? Most of our clients have a lot of credit risk, corporate credit risk, excuse me, corporate risk in their portfolios, whether it's private equity or on the credit side. What about real assets? That's why asset-backed finance, that's why investment grade have been so convincing for,
35:58 Speaker 03 you know, so high conviction for our clients, because it offers that diversification. It offers that access to real hard assets that are downside protected versus corporate risk. And then I would say the other big theme for our clients around the world is something we call multi-asset credit. It is this notion that credit as a whole is a place I want to be deployed into. However, I'm also recognizing the fact that markets ebb and flow. Where one market within credit is attractive, one might be less attractive. How do I partner with someone like Blackstone across everything we do over a dozen different asset classes within credit to build a diversified, resilient, higher yielding portfolio that
36:42 Speaker 03 allows me to pivot to the best opportunities in the market, wherever they may be?
36:47 Tracy Alloway? Setting aside some of the cockroach phenomenon of late 2025, there was another thing that happened that was pretty big for the credit market, and that was the withdrawal of the leveraged lending guidelines for banks, basically making it easier for them to do broadly syndicated loans. Would you expect that to increase competition between the banks and the, you know, BDCs, so to speak?
37:11 Speaker 03 Look, that one's gotten a lot of attention. I've spoken to a lot of my friends at the banks recently. I think the reality is on new direct lending deals, the market, and by the market, I mean the private equity sponsors, they've largely spoken, right? Like, speed, certainty, flexibility, customization, all the stuff I hit on, that's a really good thing for them, especially when they're buying a company and they're in a competitive auction process. Even deals that met the leveraged loan lending guidelines that were in place, over the last two years, 85% of them were financed privately, right? So even when you had complying deals, they were, borrowers were still choosing private credit. I'd say today, our partnership opportunities with the banks, particularly on the investment
37:56 Speaker 03 grade side of what we do, it is more, it is bigger than anything, I would say, that we've seen over the last several years. The banks desire to partner with us where they keep the client arrangement, they keep the servicing, we keep the asset. We are seeing that as a global dynamic, especially around some of these longer duration asset classes, these hard asset asset classes. And those are the exact things that our, our investors want. And so I think that partnership opportunity will continue to grow.
38:25 Tracy Alloway? This is the frenemy dynamic that we've spoken about before, right? So, private lenders are in competition with the public lenders, the banks, but at the same time, we're seeing more partnerships.
38:35 Joe Weisenthal? No, and there's a lot of, something intuitive there about wanting to keep that relationship, but also this element of like, okay, the speed and customization, the financing. I have a question actually about management, internal management and the art of growing a business. You mentioned being proactive, so you're gonna have people on the phone and they're like, "We did this thing, we should be interested in this solution," and so forth. You have this big company, you're building it over time. I'm curious, like, how do you design a system such that you have lots of people working the phones, but wanting to grow their own books, but not lower standards and let garbage into it? And how do you think, like, how do you build those systems into it so that the person on the phone
39:20 Joe Weisenthal? isn't, you know, yeah, bringing in a bunch of garbage just to grow volume?
39:24 Speaker 03 I love this question. So, as I think back at the history of our business at Blackstone Credit, obviously, we've seen tremendous growth, we've seen tremendous success. A big turning point for me personally was COVID, because up until that point in time, we ran each of our businesses almost as verticals, right? We, whether it was direct lending, or asset-backed finance, or liquid credit, we had PMs in each of those businesses and they ran each of their businesses from raising the capital to investing the capital to manage the team, almost as a vertical entity. We had no horizontal layer. But what COVID taught us when we were all at home in our pajamas and the markets were going wonky, that we needed that connectivity. It would be really valuable if one piece of our business was really connected with the other piece of our business.
40:09 Speaker 03 And so, we started building out our CIO office, which I lead, as a horizontal layer to connect all of the dots and bring tremendous consistency across our teams. And five years on, that team is now 120-plus people. And what that team does day in, day out, is unifying the fabric of every single one of our investment businesses. And so, we have a single investment committee. That whether you are a direct lending deal or an asset-backed deal or a liquid deal, you go to that same investment committee, same underwriting standards, same memo, but most importantly, the same people hearing the deals from all the different parts of the Blackstone credit ecosystem to know where are the best opportunities.
40:52 Speaker 03 By the way, that investment committee also includes senior representatives of Blackstone outside of credit. What are we learning in private equity? What are we learning in infrastructure that might influence this decision? The way we aggregate and monitor data, we now have one centralized portfolio company reporting system. And so anytime we see weaknesses in an area instantly, the entire team knows that and say, okay, let's pull back origination in this sector and let's lean into origination in this other sector. And so systemizing our data, centralizing our processes, being even more plugged into the themes we see more broadly at Blackstone, that has been a critical part of our journey and I think a huge competitive advantage for us going forward.
41:35 Tracy Alloway? I just want to go back to where we started the conversation and I mean, really the beginning of the conversation, your job title. So CIO for Blackstone Credit and Insurance.
41:45 Speaker 03 Yep.
41:46 Tracy Alloway? I think this is really important and underappreciated in many ways, but the partnership between insurers and private credit has been phenomenal. Like a lot of the private credit growth that we are seeing is coming directly from insurers. How important is it to, I guess, be in insurance company if you're in the private credit space or have access to that pool of capital?
42:09 Speaker 03 Sure. Well, a couple of points I want to really hit here. One is our business model in insurance because it is different than some others, right? We don't have a captive insurance balance sheet. We don't originate insurance liabilities directly at Blackstone. All we do is act as a third-party asset manager on behalf of insurance clients. That's what we do best. That's all we want to do. Brick by brick, we've built our client base. It's a fully open architecture model. All of our clients sit shoulder to shoulder. And so I think that business model is critical, right? We don't want to compete with our clients and we want to make sure that every single one of them gets a great experience with us. I think that's a business model question and I think that's an important part of how we set up that franchise. The second piece is the why.
42:54 Speaker 03 Why are insurance companies? Seeking private credit capital. Well, in the case of a life insurer, you're writing a 40-year life insurance policy. In case of writing an annuity, you're writing a set contract. The best way to manage assets against those liabilities are safe, cash-paying, contractual assets. Those assets are exactly what we originate in private credit, and that excess spread that we've been talking about throughout this discussion, 150 to 200 basis points for investment-grade like-for-like credit, that is extraordinarily valuable for insurance companies versus just buying traditional
43:37 Speaker 03 liquids on the screen. And we've seen US insurance companies adopt that in scale with a ton of success. And one of the big themes I see going forward is that same idea expanding to Europe, expanding to Asia, because it is such a strong fit for insurance company balance sheets. High-quality, safe, contractual, long-duration, investment-grade assets.
44:01 Joe Weisenthal? So I've never worked in insurance or private credit, but I've worked in the media industry, in the digital media industry. And one of the phenomenons that you see is company starts and they buy various third-party solutions off the shelf. Like, oh, I'm gonna like buy a piece of software to run my content management system for the website. Then you grow, and then you grow, and you're like, you know what? This third-party solution doesn't work. I need to build my own software for managing my content, et cetera. Does it, what happens? Like, do insurance companies hit a point where it's like, you know what? We've enjoyed doing business with you, but we actually want to launch our own private credit arm. And we know that there are some, of course, I mean, there are insurers who are joined at the, do all, do they, what, is there a point where it just makes sense
44:46 Joe Weisenthal? for them to like have their own private credit shop? Or is it sort of? Case by case, whether that makes sense for them.
44:52 Speaker 03 Well, I think the direction of travel broadly is the other way, right? The reason why our business has grown so much is because insurance companies have said, hey, Blackstone, you're really good at this. You've got a huge dedicated team. You've got tons of expertise. We can't replicate it. But that is company by company and some continue to do some things in-house. Some have certain strategies where they have that expertise and they'll continue to do that in-house and we're happy to complement in the areas where we can be additive. But I would say the overall direction of travel is a realization that we have built out this infrastructure, this origination team, this CIO, portfolio management franchise, this asset allocation framework, and clients want to benefit from that.
45:34 Tracy Alloway? You've mentioned excess spreads throughout this conversation and I take the point that everything is relative. I think I mentioned that in the intro, but it is also true that spreads on direct lending have fallen over the past year. So I think we went below 10% for like the first time in three years, something like that. They used to be in the mid to low teens. What do you see happening to spreads next year or this year, I should say? Because it seems kind of concerning to me if we're getting more supply, but spreads are grinding tighter.
46:07 Speaker 03 Yeah. Well, look, I think there's a couple of things there. First, you mentioned it, right? Borrowers do have choice, right? And so there is going to be some connection to where the liquid markets are. And over time, that 200 basis point spread for privates versus liquids has held and it holds today. And so I think that's one thing to watch. And I think that relative value point you made is the critical point. I think the second thing is, yes, you're starting to see more M and A supply, but we're still well off where we were five years ago. And so I think there's still a lot more room to run. And when I kind of step back and I look at the simple math of private equity dry powder versus private credit dry powder, private equity dry powder outstrips it five to one. Okay.
46:51 Speaker 03 And so I think there's still a lot more room to run in the supply equation. I think spreads today are pretty stable and I think our clients earning that excess spread versus liquids, earning that absolute return, which still feels quite good, even though it's not the same as it was three years ago, still feels quite good relative to where equities are valued today and other things in their portfolio.
47:13 Joe Weisenthal? In private assets in general, one of the popular critiques is that, you know, people call volatility laundering. It's like, oh, look, I had a rough quarter in my in my stock portfolio and my whatever, but my credit portfolio was flat this quarter and because there were no trades, there were no marks, and that makes me feel sleep easier at night. And the accusation is is an industry built to some extent on this notion of like, here is this asset class that just like helps me sleep better at night, it doesn't doesn't move, etc. What do you what's the response to the volatility laundering claim in in private assets generally?
47:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, a couple of things there. First, I look to a 20 year loss ratio, right? Like, you can't hide that over 20 years. And I think those stats speak for themselves. Second, you're right, like, this question around valuations have have been out there in private assets, and Blas has been around for 40 years. We use a best in class process with third party valuation providers. We mark our book every single quarter. And and those third parties are the ones that are doing it. And we mark that to market, company fundamentals, market moves, that all shows up. What's funny to me is, you know, when we do see underperformance in an asset, and we mark it down, which we do on our watch list assets, we get questions about that. People are paying attention to that, yet
48:31 Speaker 03 they are also asking us out of the same breath, are you actually marking your assets? And so I think if you actually look at our portfolio, you will see a small subset of the book that isn't doing what we expected to do when we mark those accordingly. I think that's healthy. I think that's good. I think that provides some buffer for our clients, and we'll continue to use our third party well established process to continue to do so.
48:51 Tracy Alloway? You mentioned dry powder earlier, and this is a truism of markets, which is, dry powder always seems to be waiting in the wings. Like, no matter where we are in the credit cycle, someone's talking about dry powder. I'm sort of surprised to hear that much, the number you cited, in the private credit space, because again, like, we have seen phenomenal growth, and there's still cash lying around that needs to be deployed.
49:16 Speaker 03 Look, we continue to see strong flows into the market, right? The product is doing what it's supposed to do, which is generate strong, consistent outperformance for clients relative to liquids. I think as long as you see that continue, you're going to continue to see strong flows across all of our client types, whether it's insurance, institutions, individuals.
49:37 Joe Weisenthal? Question I ask a lot of people. Today in January 2026, within your organization, are you finding productive applications of generative AI tools that make your life easier and reduce, free up working hours from people who, to do other things?
49:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, look, this is a huge focus for us. And I think I would be lying if I say we have the golden ticket today. But we have a lot of focus on this area. How do we make our business more efficient? How do we make it easier on our teams? Whether it's building models, knowing what questions to ask in their due diligence process, data aggregation and analysis, all of this stuff is in motion. It's at various stages of development. And I think you will continue to see us lean into that significantly. It can never replace the investment decision, right? That's still going to be central to our process. But I think anytime we can use AI to drive efficiency, and like I said,
50:39 Speaker 03 we have tools that allow that to like create the start of an investment company memo, the start of a model, aggregate data so we can help our team see trends earlier. All of these things are in process, and I think more and more you'll see higher adoption.
50:54 Tracy Alloway? Could you imagine a future where valuation is done more by AI? Because I think about the third-party valuation services. They're doing matrix pricing, which is basically inferring the market value from, you know, other clues they can get. Inference is like, you know, that's AI, basically.
51:14 Speaker 03 I think. Using AI to support that process, you know, where have market spreads moved? Okay, this company's performance was X. How does that translate into a mark? I think you will see, just like I highlighted on the investment process, I think you will see adoption of support tools, driving efficiency, driving accuracy, driving scale. At the end of the day, you still need a human at the end of that to make the decision. But I do think you'll see it incorporated more and more into our workflows.
51:42 Joe Weisenthal? What skills are you looking for when you think about recruiting in 2026 and 2027? A lot of people anxious about what they should, what they should know, what they should be studying, et cetera. What are the skills that today are still clearly valuable and will be valuable that you would want to see in a new recruit?
51:59 Speaker 03 Well, look, first and foremost, the people we look to hire at Blackstone, incredibly hardworking, genuinely good people, motivated by, you know, taking on more growing. Some of these like fundamental traits like that is universal, and I think that will never change. I think in an environment where you're using more and more productivity tools, how do you interact with people? People want to, you know, do deals with folks that they feel like they can trust. They develop good relationships. How do you think forward around corners? These are the types of critical thinking and communication skills that I think are going to be even more valuable to layer on to all like the basic stuff we have always looked for and the people we bring into the firm.
52:44 Tracy Alloway? All right, Z, we're going to have to leave it there. But thank you so much for coming on All Thoughts. Really appreciate it.
52:48 Speaker 03 It was my absolute pleasure. Thank you, guys.
52:50 Joe Weisenthal? Thank you so much. That was a lot of fun. I learned a lot. Thank you.
53:06 Tracy Alloway? Joe? I'm a journalist or podcast host.
53:10 Joe Weisenthal? You know.
53:10 Tracy Alloway? Maybe there's a difference.
53:11 Joe Weisenthal? No, there's no, no, we're journalists. People always make parties, they're, what do you do? I say, I'm a journalist.
53:15 Tracy Alloway? All right, all right. The natural tendencies of journalists is to be a little bit more pessimistic.
53:21 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah, for sure.
53:21 Tracy Alloway? Than an investor. I mean, if you're an investor, almost by definition, you have to be optimistic.
53:25 Joe Weisenthal? I agree. A paranoid optimist.
53:28 Tracy Alloway? That's right. But I do see some signs of worry in the private credit market.
53:34 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
53:34 Tracy Alloway? Beyond the cockroaches that we talked about, you know, we have more companies doing liability managements. The documentation point I found kind of surprising because in our previous conversations, certainly in some of the research that I see, people say that documentation is declining. So investor protections are basically going down and there's more convergence with the public market and things like that. So I take the point that like every private credit investor that we have on the show is going to say that they're different.
54:05 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
54:05 Tracy Alloway? And they're more selective and things like that. And it may be true, but overall, if you're seeing documentation go down and leverage go up and supply increasing, that seems kind of bad.
54:19 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah, no, I mean, look, I think the thing that I guess, I mean, all of that sounds very intuitive to me and the tensions. The other thing that, and it's sort of related to this is like, how do you maintain? Like, okay, you think about the fundamental service, right? You think about the fundamental service of like speed and customizability and so forth. And then the tension that exists is like, okay, you want to like turn this around.
54:47 Tracy Alloway? Yeah.
54:47 Joe Weisenthal? Right away, et cetera. And the tension between that and like robust documentations and, I mean, again, 20 year business to some extent speaks for itself. But on the other hand, like you can see how these things over time would come into especially, come into tension, such a competitive environment.
55:08 Tracy Alloway? Exactly.
55:08 Joe Weisenthal? I wanted, you know what? You, you place a phone call to me because you need money. I want to be able to give you an answer right away.
55:15 Tracy Alloway? I'm going to say yes very quickly.
55:16 Joe Weisenthal? I want to be able to say. Yes to you to maintain your business, to maintain that line and the tensions that could potentially emerge between like our relationship as the lender to the borrower versus, you know, my relationship to my people who want protections, et cetera. You could see how those would emerge, for sure.
55:33 Tracy Alloway? Yeah. All right. Shall we leave it there?
55:35 Joe Weisenthal? Let's leave it there.
55:36 Tracy Alloway? All right. This has been another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alockway. You can follow me at Tracy Alockway.
55:41 Joe Weisenthal? And I'm Jill Weisenthal. You can follow me at TheStalwart. Follow our producers, Kermit Rodriguez at KermitArmandeschal, Bennett at Dashbot, and Cale Brooks at CaleBrooks. For more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com/oddlots. We have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 24/7 in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.
56:01 Tracy Alloway? And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we talk about private credit, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
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