Today we're thrilled to welcome Katie Fowler, Principal at Blue Owl Capital, one of the largest non-bank direct lenders in the United States managing over $150 billion in credit assets.
The past six months have produced a cascade of private credit headlines: cockroaches, GFC 2.0, redemption gates, and Katie joins us from inside the portfolios to separate what the data actually shows from what the media has been reporting.
In this conversation, we cover what started the panic, why declining returns are a rate math story and not a credit story, how software exposure is being mispriced, and what the current redemption wave means for investors holding these assets.
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Key Topics Covered
• Why the defaults that triggered the private credit panic were primarily financed by banks, not non-bank direct lenders, and why that distinction matters for anyone evaluating their current allocation
• How to benchmark private credit returns correctly: against comparable liquid alternatives like high yield bonds, not against the peak SOFR environment of 2022-2023
• What a 2x interest coverage ratio signals about middle market borrower health — and why lower base rates and tighter spreads mark a more credit-positive environment, not a warning signal
• How the 5% quarterly redemption gate is structurally supported by 6-8% natural quarterly repayments, and why a fund executing within that structure is working exactly as designed
• The three questions every private credit investor should ask before making any redemption or allocation decision
• What Blue Owl's $1.4 billion open-market transaction at 99.7% of par tells investors about the gap between book marks and publicly listed BDC share prices
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