Lotfi Karoui
Latest Insights
Increasing the frequency of marks does little to improve transparency or accuracy in private credit when prices are not anchored to observable, market-based transactions.
Oil sends a warning, risk assets shrug, and rates markets price in a more cautious distribution of outcomes.
How equity and credit investors are reassessing BDC valuations differently – and why high yield defaults continue to play out primarily through distressed exchanges.
The software sector remains challenged by pressured valuations, uncertain recoveries, and less reliable sponsor support.
Markets may be pricing some relief for now, but the true measure of an oil shock is how long it endures.
Across corporate lending markets, some investments are easier to trade and exit than others – differences that deserve particular attention today.
Amid geopolitical uncertainty, dispersion across credit markets – rather than a broad risk-off move – has become the dominant investment signal.
Efforts to make private credit tradable face obstacles and risk undermining one of the main reasons – earning an illiquidity premium – that investors look to private assets.
Lately, private credit has attracted its share of grim headlines, but as Lotfi Karoui — PIMCO Managing Director, Multi Asset Credit Strategist and Co Head of Client Solutions and Analytics — points out, many recent developments in the space should be seen as expected features of a cyclical credit market. In his debut appearance on Accrued Interest, Lotfi and host Greg Hall dig into the private credit story: from direct lending’s emergence after the Great Financial Crisis, to its explosive growth post-COVID, and what we can expect in the future as investor expectations realign to actual opportunities and risks. They also explore diversification options within the private credit landscape, including asset-based finance (ABF) and real estate. Join us in welcoming Lotfi to PIMCO and Accrued Interest.
Even as the direct lending sector faces scrutiny, private credit remains a broadly diversified market offering a variety of investable opportunities.