Voting Closed

To find out who won, book a table at the Debtwire Direct Lending Awards 2025 on Tuesday, 17 June at the Dorchester, London

Apollo

Since Apollo’s founding in 1990, our expertise in private credit has served as an integral component of the Firm's growth and success. Our credit businesses began with management of a high-yield bond and leveraged loan portfolio and have grown significantly since that time to cover private credit markets more broadly including direct lending and asset-backed finance.

Today, Apollo’s Credit platform accounts for our largest segment of the firm's AUM with $641bn of AUM (as of March 31, 2025) across a diverse range of credit-oriented investments. These investments utilize the same disciplined, value-oriented investment philosophy that we employ with respect to our private equity funds. Anchored in our “purchase price matters” investment philosophy, we seek to generate excess returns per unit of risk across our credit ecosystem. Our proprietary platforms and corporate capabilities enable us to originate high-quality yield, spanning private and public corporate credit, as well as asset-backed finance markets. We invest alongside our clients and take a responsible, knowledgeable approach while seeking to deliver positive returns and strong financial performance.

Within Direct Lending specifically, Apollo focuses on large corporate direct originations and upper-middle market direct lending. Apollo identified the opportunity to provide private financing to larger businesses around 2018 and began lending privately to select businesses from that time. Before then, most, if not all, lending to large, leveraged companies was done in the public markets.

Today, our direct lending platform manages over $30 billion of assets, includes over 100+ investment professional across the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific across commingled and SMA offerings and is one of the most active lenders globally in the large corporate direct originations and upper-middle market direct lending segment.

In Europe, the Direct Lending Team is led by a team of experienced professionals active across origination activities and underwriting & research. Collectively, the European Direct Lending Team has been active since 2020 and has committed over €13 billion of capital to date, including over €6.1bn of capital committed in 2024 alone supporting various marquee transactions during the year.

Blackstone Credit

Blackstone Credit & Insurance (“BXCI”) is one of the world’s leading credit investors, with $388.7 billion of AUM. Our investments span the credit markets, including private investment grade, asset based lending, public investment grade and high yield, sustainable resources, infrastructure debt, collateralized loan obligations, direct lending and opportunistic credit. BXCI seeks to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns for institutional and individual investors by offering companies capital needed to strengthen and grow their businesses. BXCI is also a leading provider of investment management services for insurers, helping those companies better deliver for policyholders through our world-class capabilities in investment grade private credit.

In 2024, BXCI’s European private credit team had a record year in terms of investment in new businesses and add-on financings, which was achieved despite a recovery in the capital markets during the year. BXCI’s capital has become what we believe to be a vital source of financing, especially for private equity sponsors. As a result, BXCI’s ’s traditional calling cards of certainty of execution and speed have enabled it to step into the financing of a wide range of companies.

By being active as a sole lender or as part of a club and by lending to large-cap as well as mid-cap companies, BXCI was able to achieve its record year of investment and deployment. BXCI leverages its 40+ strong team of investment professionals in Europe to help ensure that we are evaluating as broad a range of opportunities as possible across the continent with a thematic investment overlay focusing on sectors benefiting from long term, secular growth. As of March 2025, the median EBITDA in the private credit portfolio for BXCI’s European semi-liquid fund was €114 million.

CVC

Established in 2006, CVC Credit is the dedicated credit arm of CVC, with €45bn of AUM across two strategies – Performing Credit and Private Credit. Both strategies focus on investments in companies across the sub-investment grade corporate credit markets in Europe and North America.

CVC’s Private Credit business directly originates opportunities in high quality assets through the team's extensive relationships and by leveraging the sourcing power of the CVC Network and its broader private equity insights.
Major achievements over the past year include:

• 40+ new commitments with a gross deployment of c.€4bn, including Alpha FMC de-listing, Ilerna and Innovative Beauty Group). Significant further activity in the first three months of 2025, including Idealista, Immedica and i-Tracing.
• Realisation activity during 2024 was also busy with 17 completed in the period (including April Group, Norgine, Neopharmed and PEI Media), returning over €1.5bn to investors at a mid-teens IRR.
• CVC Credit European Direct Lending IV is currently fundraising and at 31 December 2024 had raised €7.6bn against a target of €6bn, final closing of this fund is expected in 2025.

Goldman Sachs Private Capital

Goldman Sachs AWM is a pioneer in European direct lending and has been originating private direct mezzanine financings since 1996 and senior credit since 2008. Today, we remain one of the largest direct lenders in Europe with deployed capital totaling c.$29bn across Senior Direct Lending and Mezzanine Credit. In 2024, our team invested c.$13bn across 72 closed and committed deals where the European Direct Lending team acted as a lead investor in 60% of those financings.

Thanks to close relationships with our sponsor network, flexible capital and our robust execution capabilities, we were able to invest across a number of landmark transactions in Europe across 2024:

• Committed ~$950m Unitranche refinancing package to SLR, the world’s 3rd largest pure-play environmental consultancy firm which is backed by Ares Private Equity, one of the largest Direct Lending deals of 2024
• Committed ~$730m to Sanofi, French mezzanine investment as part of CD&R’s LBO of Opella, Europe’s largest LBO since 2020 and France’s largest LBO ever
• Committed ~$775m investment in a HoldCo PIK in Nord Anglia, supporting the LBO by EQT, CPPIB and Neuberger Berman, which represents the UK’s largest junior financing for the year
• Committed ~$680m in a HoldCo PIK Refinancing of Ceva Sante Animale, a global animal health company
• Closed ~$500m lead in a Unitranche in Dechra to support EQT’s acquisition in the #3 largest player in pet specialty pharmaceuticals player globally
• Closed ~$490m investment in a Private TL and DDTL to support refinancing of Ardonagh, a global insurance broker owned by MDP (majority shareholder) and HPS

 Significant product growth and innovation:

• A European private credit evergreen strategy. At the end of 2024, the strategy was the largest of its kind in the market  
• Loan Partners V, our global flagship senior direct lending strategy, held a final close in May 2024 with a momentous fund size of $13.1bn, including LP equity commitments, long term asset financing, and Goldman Sachs balance sheet commitment alongside the fund

SMBC Private Credit

SMBC Private Credit is a core part of the bank’s unique leverage finance eco-system with an ability to provide comprehensive sole solutions including; SSRCF, term loans, derivatives and underwriting capability that is a true differentiator in the European market.

Launching in 2017 with a leadership team that has been working together for 15yrs+, it continues to grow and expand with more than 60 transactions closed since inception and 23 over calendar 2024, SMBC is now ranking firmly in the top 10 European private credit league tables. SMBC has delivered not only capital solutions for our clients, but also consistency, certainty of execution and support during the life of the facilities.

What sets SMBC apart?

• One stop solution – SMBC can provide not only the unitranche debt, but also the SS RCF and the hedging, reducing deal complexity and number of parties sponsors are dealing with.
• Ability to underwrite – whilst being able to commit up to $400m to a single transaction, SMBC can underwrite beyond this, facilitating smoother execution for clients.
• Flexible solutions – unlike others, the private credit team sits alongside the broadly syndicated loans team, allowing SMBC to offer BSL and private credit solutions from one deal team. IRIS, April and Civica are recent examples.
• Execution capabilities – team can execute under tight timelines (such as Zellis pre-empt) and support customers in complex asks such as take privates (Adevinta) or carve outs (WGSN).

Aspen Pumps Case Study (€680m financing)

SMBC Group and partners jointly structured, arranged and anchored the €680m refinancing package for Aspen Pumps Group. SMBC Group also acted as the Underwriter and the Bookrunner for the remainder of the facilities to provide Inflexion with 100% coverage of the facilities needed to support the acquisition. SMBC has also provided a range of derivative facilities to the company.

PSP Investments

The Public Sector Pension Investment Board (“PSP Investments”) is one of Canada’s largest pension investment managers with C$264.9bn AUM as of March 31st, 2024. PSP Credit Investments ("PSP CI") is its credit team and committed over C$60bn in more than 300 transactions since its inception in late 2015. We believe what sets us apart from other direct lenders is the flexibility of our mandate. PSP CI invests in public and private instruments across the capital structure, such as 1st lien, junior debt including 2nd lien, unsecured bond, and HoldCo PIK transactions. Historically, the focus has been on sub-investment grade corporate credit but recently, the mandate was expanded to also include infrastructure debt and private investment grade debt. As of March 31st, 2024, PSP CI has net assets under management C$26.2bn.

The European PSP CI team consists of 15 investment professionals and invested C$7.3bn in Europe. The team focuses on large cap transactions across Europe. PSP CI's broad mandate, close sponsor relationships, and strong execution capabilities underpin robust, high-quality deal flow, often being the first call for our partners' capital markets teams.

2024 was a strong year for the European team, committing over C$2.5bn to more than 20 transactions, including landmark deals such as:

• Opella: participated in the €1.2bn HoldCo PIK supporting CD&R's carve-out of Sanofi's consumer healthcare division, one of the largest LBOs in Europe and a great example of combining public and private credit within one capital structure
• Adevinta: participated in the €4.5bn unitranche financing to support Blackstone’s and Permira’s take-private of Adevinta, a leading global media and advertising company specialized in online classifieds
• Ceva Santé Animale: participated in a HoldCo PIK supporting the refinancing of Ceva, a leading global animal health business
• Learning Technologies Group: participated in a $526m unitranche supporting General Atlantic’s take private of UK e-learning provider Learning Technologies Group

Voting Closed

To find out who won, book a table at the Debtwire Direct Lending Awards 2025 on Tuesday, 17 June at the Dorchester, London