Or: why Europe’s insurers are becoming its lenders Last week, the people who manage Europe’s insurance capital gathered in London for Insurance Investor Live | Europe. The pool is roughly €10 trillion.[1] Whatever the panel titles said, the question in the room was the one this series has
Or: how bank capital rules shape access to credit A bank loan today meets two tests. The first is a regulatory capital test; an underlying model weighs the risk of the exposure and the capital required against it. The second is a commercial test; an underlying model calculates risk-adjusted
Or: why Social Infrastructure is operating risk in sovereign clothing. Social infrastructure is sold on one idea: that the government stands behind it. Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) schools, care homes, children’s residential homes, supported housing all fall under the social infrastructure umbrella. Local authorities have a statutory
Capital has flooded into European private credit. Spreads have compressed, covenants have weakened, and stress is accumulating silently in the upper mid-market. Occasional "surprises" lead to discontinuous price movements. It is a long grind through marks and valuations. We call it the Dodgeball Market. This paper makes
Or: Why PE Should Focus on Purchase Price Multiples. In November 2023 we set out the Dodgeball Market thesis. We argued that the cycle was overextended, that “adjusted” numbers were flattering reality, and that our base case was a long grind through private market marks and valuations, with occasional discontinuities.
or: The Emerging Boom in the European Independent Sponsor Market. One of our heuristics is look what worked well over the last 10 years and consider the opposite. Private Equity worked exceptionally well but for reasons we will cover in a future VCO (hint: initial conditions matter), excess returns will
Or: What if the collateral isn’t there at all? Two years ago, we posted on LinkedIn about the Dodgeball Market: “This is a golden age of fraud. Bubbles tend to attract financial shenanigans and we are starting to see the fallout of this.” While the prospect of defaults may
Or: What does 'downside protection' mean in digital infrastructure? Digital infrastructure - fibre, towers, data centres, fixed wireless - has attracted extraordinary volumes of institutional capital over the past decade, often on the basis that it represents a uniquely defensive asset class. The pitch was intuitive: essential services, recurring revenues,
Or: What's the Value in Loan-To-Value? The question we get asked most often when we present our European asset backed capital solutions strategy (Vertis Capital Solutions or "VCS") is: "What is the Loan-to-Value you lend at?" This is an innocent
Or: Why initial conditions dominate. When markets are overvalued and “adjusted” numbers flatter reality, fragility creeps in. In 2025 we started to see some initial signs of anxiety creeping into the private credit market. Our base case is a long grind through private market marks and valuations, with occasional discontinuities