Arcmont

Over the past 15 years, Arcmont has established itself as a leading European private credit platform, raising €41bn of investible capital and deploying €40bn across more than 500 transactions through multiple cycles and market environments. This scale reflects a consistently high level of sponsor engagement and origination capability, underpinned by disciplined underwriting and focus on delivering reliable execution across the mid‑market.

Scale, discipline and repeatable origination characterised Arcmont’s activity in 2025, delivering a record year of deployment. While investing across the full size spectrum, approximately half of overall deployment was directed to the European mid‑market, underlining the platform’s continued strategic focus on its core segment.
During this record year, Arcmont partnered with a broad group of leading mid‑market sponsors, completing transactions with both long‑standing counterparties and new relationships. This consistency of deployment reflects a platform able to scale without compromising underwriting discipline.

We would highlight two transactions to represent Arcmont’s mid‑market strategy: acting as sole lender delivering conservative, covenanted capital structures in complex situations.

Case Study: Minerva Imaging (Nordic Capital)

Arcmont supported Nordic Capital’s acquisition of Minerva Imaging through a bespoke financing solution, underwriting several layers of complexity including a specialist healthcare segment, an evolving business profile and an ambitious buy‑and‑build strategy. We believe that the transaction demonstrated Arcmont’s ability to underwrite growth and support sponsors in complex mid‑market situations.

Case Study: SDB (Main Capital)

Arcmont acted as sole senior lender and full underwriter in the refinancing of an established healthcare platform with a highly recurring revenue model. The deal was part of a complex multi-asset continuation vehicle transaction by Main Capital which also included a sizeable acquisition in the Nordics. We believe that the transaction demonstrated Arcmont’s ability to successfully source off-market opportunities and highlighted the execution certainty and relevance in a competitive and structurally complex process, while maintaining a disciplined, covenanted structure.

Ares
 
Ares is a leading global alternative investment manager with ~$623bn AUM¹, of which ~$85bn+ in European Direct Lending. We seek to make self-originated debt investments in European companies to support growth, acquisitions, refinancings and the changing needs of our portfolio companies, while maintaining control positions in the capital structure. We maintain a flexible mandate but primarily focus on senior secured investments in companies operating in defensive sectors.

• Scaled team: ~100² investment professionals (including 25+² portfolio management professionals), which enables us to consistently be among the most active lenders in Europe
• Pan-European footprint: Seven originating offices across Europe, including a Milan office opened in 2025 to expand Italian coverage
• Deep sponsor relationships: Deep relationships with diversified sponsor network seeking direct lending partners who can offer certainty of execution and flexibility to support future growth    
• Sectors invested in: We focus on companies operating in over 20 defensive sectors
• Core middle-market focus: €10mm+ EBITDA target

In 2025, Ares EDL continued to demonstrate robust origination and deployment, reaching a record level of deals reviewed for the strategy while maintaining selectivity within our historical ~3-5% range, despite evolving M&A markets.

1. As of December 31, 2025. AUM amounts include funds managed by Ivy Hill Asset Management, L.P., a wholly owned portfolio company of Ares Capital Corporation and registered investment adviser.
2. As of March 18, 2026. Includes offers accepted.

Barings

With a truly pan European direct lending platform, Barings is a leading provider of flexible capital solutions to mid-market sponsors across Europe, combining significant scale, direct origination, and a proven ability to execute complex transactions. With €21bn in investor commitments and €16bn of AUM, the European platform has built significant scale and is consistently ranked among the top three European mid-market lenders.

In 2025, the European team deployed over €3.4bn across 51 mid-market transactions, spanning the UK & Ireland, Germany, France, Spain and Luxembourg, and partnering with 34 unique sponsors.

Notable deals included acting as sole lender on Abry Partners’ acquisition of AA Ireland, the market‑leading provider of motor insurance and roadside assistance and backing HGGC in its take‑private of Inspired plc, a UK energy procurement and consulting business.

Further underlining its market leadership, Barings also launched Europe’s first multi-currency private credit CLO in 2025, totalling €401m, reinforcing its position as an innovative financing provider.

The strength of the European platform is underpinned by a highly diversified capital base, which spans closed end funds, perpetual vehicles, separately managed accounts, a CLO franchise and investments on behalf of our parent, MassMutual. This flexibility allows us to deliver bespoke financing solutions while remaining a long term, reliable partner to sponsors.

We also benefit from a large incumbent European portfolio of borrowers, which is testament to our long-standing sponsor relationships and helps support off market origination, whilst providing a strong information advantage and enhanced risk management.

Eurazeo

Eurazeo is one of the most established alternatives platforms in Europe with more than €39bn in assets under management. The firm’s direct lending strategy has invested c. €11.2bn into over 270 companies across Europe since 2007, with consistently high returns. The direct lending strategy is mainly focused on senior debt (at least 85% of the capital deployed) for sponsored transactions in the lower mid-market. The senior leadership team has more than 20 years of investment experience in the private debt asset class. The team consists of 24 professionals across 6 offices in Paris, Frankfurt, London, Milan, Madrid, and a recently opened office in Stockholm.

In 2025, Eurazeo was one of the two most active direct lenders in Europe, investing €2.4bn in 59 separate transactions across Europe. Buy-and-build activity was significant, with c.66 additional add-on transactions financed by Eurazeo, representing c. €390m of extra financing.

ESG is fully embedded in the investment strategy, with 100% of direct lending deals throughout the year having sustainability-linked features.

In 2025, Eurazeo’s Private Debt activity recorded another year of strong fundraising, reaching €2.7bn. Eurazeo has pursued fundraising for its latest institutional vintage, Eurazeo Private Debt VII, benefiting from strong momentum to reach its target size. Eurazeo also continued fundraising through dedicated platforms opened to private wealth investors and now manages one of the largest European Private Debt retail funds.

Eurazeo has also strengthened its approach in the midmarket segment, through the creation of a nearly €500m continuation vehiclefor a diversified portfolio of performing European senior credit assets originating from Eurazeo’s legacy private debt platforms.

Goldman Sachs Private Credit

Goldman Sachs Alternatives is a pioneer in European direct lending and has been originating private direct mezzanine financings since 1996, senior direct lending investing started in 2008 and European middle market in 2013. Today, we remain one of the largest direct lenders in European middle market with currently deployed capital totaling c.$5.5bn across more than 40 middle market companies owned by 28 unique private equity sponsors, with a portfolio weighted average EBITDA at entry of EUR 29mn.

Our European middle market direct lending strategy is highly selective with limited deployment, driven by precision and conviction. Thanks to this philosophy the strategy has no debt-to-equity swaps (since inception in 2013) and no recent or ongoing restructurings.

In 2025, our team invested $2.8bn across 22 deals where the Europe Direct Lending team acted as lead / co-lead investor across all new investments that closed in the year. We have the capability to invest across the capital structure and into a broad range of company sizes. We have also successfully supported several companies over multiple LBOs and a large number of our mid market portfolio companies continue to be supported by our large cap direct lending funds.

Thanks to close relationships with our sponsor relationships, flexible capital and our robust execution capabilities, we were able to invest across a number of landmark transactions in Europe across 2025 diversified across sectors and countries. Some of the key 2025 transactions we (co-)led include:

• Committed a $451m Unitranche financing package to Key Group, UK’s leading provider of cloud-native management information systems (“MIS”) for primary and secondary state schools, to support its acquisition by Permira
• Committed a $259m Unitranche and HoldCo PIK financing package to Attikon, an insurance brokerage platform offering property & casualty insurance for commercial clients (mostly SMEs), to support its acquisition by Astorg
• Committed $306m Unitranche financing package to Aurora Energy, leading industry-standard provider of global power market insights and forecasts, to support its acquisition by TPG

Muzinich

Muzinich & Co. is a privately-owned, investment firm specialising in public and private corporate credit. Our business was founded on three key principles: to understand and manage risk better than our competitors, to navigate business cycles and find value in credit markets, and to deliver the best possible returns for our clients.

Our capabilities cover a wide range of global public and private credit markets, from investment-grade, emerging markets and syndicated loans to direct lending, parallel lending and aviation finance. Our private debt team comprises 54 investment professionals located in 12 offices across Europe, helping us stay close to our investments.
Founded in 2014, our European direct lending business focuses on the lower-middle market where, as a trusted financing partner, we provide customised lending solutions that align with each borrower’s unique growth journey.
Our approach is defined by our close borrower collaboration via our on-the-ground network. This gives us the jurisdictional knowledge, language and relationships to provide strategic guidance as well as capital to help businesses scale effectively and profitably.

We lend to companies across sectors including services, healthcare, technology, consumer staples and media. These companies share attractive characteristics such as recurring revenue, strong cash flow and low capital intensity, making them well-suited for direct lending. Whether backing sponsor-led transactions or directly supporting founder-and family-owned businesses, we structure financing solutions that match the needs and ambitions of each company.
At the core of our lending model is the ability to move quickly and decisively. Through unitranche debt structures we offer both speed and certainty of execution - a key differentiator in competitive or time-sensitive transactions. We actively support buy-and-build strategies and growth financings, building long-term partnerships that often result in repeat business, either through private equity sponsors or with companies directly.

During 2025, we completed 81 transactions in Europe. We have been particularly active in core European countries with 27 deals completed by our Paris-based team, 24 by the team in Milan, 11 by our Madrid-based team and 6 by our Frankfurt office. We worked with over 40 sponsors (private equity, banks and other institutions) as well as family-owned businesses. This robust network of relationships allows us to originate transactions that best aligned with the risk-return profile of our portfolios.  We were particularly active in business infrastructure, professional services, manufacturing, consumer goods and healthcare.

Our track record is built on consistency, integrity and the success of our borrowers. Many of our relationships span multiple transactions and cycles  - a testament to the trust we’ve earned as a reliable, thoughtful capital provider in the lower middle market.