WASHINGTON: While JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Jamie Dimon thinks the US$1.7 trillion private credit market may have hit a peak, Blue Owl Capital Inc is still bullish on its bread-and-butter product.
The firm is seeing a “continued secular shift to private credit and direct lending in particular”, Craig Packer, the co-president and head of credit at Blue Owl, said during an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.
“Even after tariffs, where you thought you might see a slowdown, there was a little bit of a slowdown, but certainly nothing that you would call a plateau or a peak,” he said.
Earlier Tuesday, on a call discussing the bank’s second-quarter earnings, JPMorgan chief executive officer (CEO) Dimon said: “You may have seen peak private credit.”
The CEO was answering a question from an analyst about whether JPMorgan might want to buy a private credit firm.
Blue Owl is eyeing one segment in particular for growth: “trillions of dollars” of opportunity in investment-grade private debt, a wide-ranging sector that includes financing data centres for high-grade corporates and consumer credit.
“We are relatively small in that space, and it’s an area that we can grow,” Packer said of investment-grade private credit.
Packer said private credit yields are outperforming the public market, adding there’s plenty of investment opportunity still out there. — Bloomberg
