It’s that time of year again — private credit withdrawal season. Investors in Blackstone’s flagship private credit fund sought to yank 10% of their money this quarter, showing that the jitters engulfing the industry may be deepening.
At Cliffwater’s main lending fund, the figure was 17%. Requests at both funds were higher than in the previous quarter, and both are holding the line by capping redemptions at 5%. (Blackstone had dipped into its own pockets and those of employees to honor the 8% redemptions it received last quarter.)
Default rates have risen and the AI fears around loans to software companies are real, but most financiers don’t see a crisis brewing. “This economy is much stronger than the narrative suggests,” Goldman Sachs president John Waldron told Semafor in April, as withdrawals were mounting at credit funds.
Worries aren’t limited to the credit side: redemption requests for Partners Group’s flagship fund, which includes a mix of debt and equity, rose to 10% this quarter. Partners, like Blackstone and Cliffwater, capped payouts at 5% of the fund’s value.