Cloud 9fin

Daniel Rudnicki Schlumberger, a 30-year JP Morgan veteran, sits down with senior leveraged finance reporter Nicolle Liu to unpack how the bank is exporting its Security and Resiliency Initiative (SRI) from the US to EMEA — mobilizing private capital for the sectors governments now treat as strategic.

Schlumberger also discusses:

• The $1.5trn, 10-year target and the full capital stack behind it: balance-sheet lending, syndicated loans, high yield, equity private placements, IPOs, venture and direct lending, second lien, PIK and hybrid capital;
• Where the money is going: aerospace and defense, nuclear, wind, solar, grid resiliency, AI, quantum, cyber, rare minerals, shipbuilding, robotics and critical medicines;
• Deals in focus: Oxford Quantum Circuits' equity private placement, Czechoslovak Group's HY bond and defense IPO, and CoreWeave's debut euro bond;
• Plus: private equity's push into defense consolidation, the sovereign data center question, government engagement, and how JP Morgan is staffing up its SRI team.

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India’s private credit market is moving from IBC-era rescue finance to a broader asset class. Performing credit is hot, but complexity-driven capital remains scarce and potentially higher alpha.

InCred Alternatives’ Ankur Jain, who is a managing director for private credit strategies, tells 9fin APAC reporter Rajhkumar Shaaw about a market that is still only about $25bn-$30bn in AUM, or 0.6% of GDP, but growing at roughly 25% CAGR.

Jain also unpacks India’s private credit boom, why global macro has had limited impact on India-focused borrowers, and how domestic funds and wealth-market co-investments are increasingly challenging foreign investors.

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A major theme of the first half of 2026 was Anthropic’s Claude Code triggering a software sell-off that is still reshaping private credit, BSL and distressed debt. In the latest episode of Cloud 9fin Dan Mika, Anna Russi and Samantha Stokes unpack the first half of the year and what shocks await in the second half.

The team reviews a volatile first half that began with optimism around M&A, Hologic, Electronic Arts and new-money LBO supply, before the software sell-off and Iran war changed the tone. Dan Mika contrasts IG M&A volume with weaker high-yield and leveraged loan activity, while Anna Russi explains how private credit lenders are reassessing software underwriting after Medallia handed keys to lenders. Samantha Stokes discusses distressed credits trading down ahead of 2028 and 2029 maturity walls, with lenders wary of long-dated refis as AI risk remains hard to price.

The episode also covers the limited but sector-specific impact of the Iran war on chemicals, building products and airlines, including Tronox, Cornerstone Building Brands and Spirit Airlines. Looking ahead, the team flags private credit liquidity stress, retail redemptions, portfolio sales at managers including Blue Owl, Apollo, FS KKR and New Mountain, rising secondaries activity, Mudrick’s LME fund and the risk of higher-for-longer SOFR.

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El Niño is back, and *Cloud 9fin’*s LatAm and CEEMEA editors see credit risks spreading across energy, agriculture and sovereign balance sheets.

Deputy LevFin Editor Sasha Padbidri speaks with LatAm Editor Xochitl Herrera and CEEMEA Editor Dan Alderson on how worsening weather shocks are feeding into leveraged credit and emerging market risk.

In Colombia, drought could cut hydropower output just as gas production falls, forcing more imports while Canacol works through a Canadian restructuring process. Xochitl also flags Mexico’s exposure to Henry Hub through gas imports, Chilean utilities’ hydropower upside, and Brazil’s soybean and corn vulnerability.

Dan breaks down Africa’s uneven El Niño effects, from Southern African drought to East African flooding, against a backdrop of food, fuel and fertilizer disruption.

Here’s a summary of the 9fin articles mentioned in the podcast:

• Africa vs Godzilla El Niño — Key battle lines for credit in 2026/27
• Colombia braces for perfect storm as El Niño looms over gas crisis
• FEMSA, KOF and Alsea may benefit from El Niño effect
• El Niño could lift Chile utilities, but less than last time
• Brazil climate whiplash could put key credits to the test
• Houston, we have a solution — How space data centers could be debt's next frontier
• Hurricane Helene hits southeastern US borrowers
• Hurricane Beryl shakes up Texas borrowers
• $98bn in AI projects disrupted by mounting environmental and labor risks
• Resistance is fertile — Iran war’s impact on agriculture and CPI

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When an announcement was made last year that Universal Studios was making a movie about Archie Andrews produced by Hollywood heavyweights, it should have been a victory for one of comics’ most enduring franchises. Instead, it triggered a legal war which ties up a Beverly Hills mansion, accusations of threats fit for an “organized crime figure” and a much-awaited movie on the line.

With a UCC foreclosure auction set for June 15, the fate of Archie Andrews — and the Archie Comics empire — hangs in the balance.

In this episode, 9fin’s global head of distressed and LevFin, Max Frumes, sat down with distressed debt reporter Maria Heeter and LME legal analyst Laurie Tomassian, co-authors of a recent investigation into the dispute between lender Raven Capital and Archie Comics co-CEO Jonathan Goldwater to break down how it all unraveled.

As a quick shoutout, the episode references and includes short audio clips from the 1969 hit 'Sugar, Sugar' by the fictional bubblegum-pop group, The Archies. The song held the #1 spot on the Billboard Top 100 for eight weeks between October and December 1969. The episode theme song is a tongue-in-cheek homage to The Archies’ second studio album, Everything’s Archie, created bespoke for this episode by our producer Chase Collum.

Clarifications: There's actually no show called “Desperate Mormon Housewives. Instead the popular reality television series was called "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives". Also, while Archie Comics did once don the wrappers of Topps bubble gum, that was in the 1950s, and the host was almost certainly referring to Bazooka Joe.

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Bitcoin Depot went from a $600m, publicly-traded business to bankrupt in a matter of months, but the story around the company and other crypto ATM providers has been brewing for years. We happen to have just the guy on staff to break it all down.

In this episode of Cloud 9fin, head of bankruptcy Cat Corey talks with senior LevFin reporter Dan Mika about his previous reporting on the crypto ATM industry’s history of targeting neighborhoods of color, and how it has become a favorite tool for organized scam groups to separate victims from their cash. The two also talk about what value is left for creditors in a business model where — in the eyes of lawmakers — the societal harm is too great to ignore.

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Stories referenced in this pod:
- High-fee crypto ATMs center around low-income parts of Kansas City
- How Crypto ATMs in the U.S. Became A Favorite Tool for Scammers
- FBI Internet Crime Report 2025

In our latest episode of Syndication Nation, leveraged finance reporter Sunny Oh sits down with Mark Melchiorre, chief investment officer of Forza Investment Group, to discuss how insurance-focused asset managers are helping to finance America’s new “Manhattan Project” — the rapid buildout of tech and AI-driven digital infrastructure.

Melchiorre discusses his journey through credit markets and the appeal of hybrid capital in a world of growing dispersion. He also talks about the prospects for small modular nuclear reactors, which have garnered interest as power proves to be a key bottleneck in the race to develop new data centers.

Check out coverage on leveraged finance and private credit at 9fin.com.

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It seems that over the past few months, you could sum up the troubles facing private credit with one word: ‘illiquidity.’ This is a key tenet of the asset class, and it is often cited among the reasons for private credit’s premium. But it also can pose challenges, as seen through record redemption requests from non-traded BDCs and the dilemma of managing the tail end of a fund’s life.

Two paths to manage those challenges are to raise more money and engage in secondary transactions. So, who better to ask about this moment in private credit than Campbell Lutyen’s global head of private credit Jeffrey Griffiths, whose team leads private credit fundraising and secondaries advisory.

In this episode of Cloud 9fin’s Private Chat series, reporter Tom Quinn checks in with Griffiths to learn about the state of the fundraising market and how secondary transactions are taking shape.

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Sponsors Bain and Cinven are confident creditors will approve the A&E deal for Arxada, despite opposition from its senior unsecured bondholders. But is that confidence based on sunny optimism?

9fin sources say negotiations are ongoing with the SUNs in the background as the deadline to sign up for the deal is today (28 May). The company may look to extend by a day, Cinven partner Christopher Anderson, said on a Q1 26 earnings call yesterday (27 May).

The company received over 90% support from its secured creditors last week, Anderson said. However, he did not give an update on the SUN consent threshold, which was a meagre 20% at the deal launch on 13 May.

The company needs 75% from each class of creditors to implement the deal through an English scheme of arrangement, which it filed for on 26 May.

In this episode of Distressed Diaries, host and senior reporter Bianca Boorer speaks with distressed credit analyst Yusuf Sule and senior legal consultant Luke Viner about the A&E deal, creditor sentiment, what could happen if it goes to court, and how the company might handle the unconsenting SUNs.

In our latest episode of Syndication Nation, US investment grade editor William Hoffman and senior leveraged finance reporter Sunny Oh discuss one of the hottest topics in corporate credit — data center bonds.

With billions of dollars of fresh debt hitting both high-grade and high-yield markets to finance the AI infrastructure buildout, investors are being asked to underwrite these project finance-type deals. That’s changing the job of the average tech credit analyst, forcing them to exercise a due diligence muscle they don’t typically use.

For more detail, read Will, Sunny, Yiwen and Dan’s latest piece discussing all the nuances and structures that lenders say can make or break one of these bond offerings. Find all our coverage of this new debt class at 9fin.com.

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