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