Middle Market Debt Weekly: October Hike Odds at 70% on a Five-Year-High PMI

Asset-based lenders spent the week re-papering the plumbing of the secured market rather than reacting to it. AirBoss amended and restated its revolving asset-based credit facility with The Toronto-Dominion Bank and added a new term loan from independent lender Great Rock Capital Partners, pushing the maturity of its split-collateral structure out five years to September 24, 2031.¹ Two days later, McGraw Hill folded its own senior secured ABL revolving credit agreement into a $1.48 billion refinancing that also carries a new $830 million term loan B and a $500 million senior secured notes offering, extending the ABL line’s maturity to 2031 alongside the rest of the capital structure.⁴,⁶ Independent commercial finance lenders kept writing checks against acquisitions rather than just working capital: Crestline Direct Finance and Encina Commercial Finance provided a $275 million first-lien term loan and a $25 million revolver to fund National CineMedia’s completed acquisition of Captivate,⁷ while a seven-bank syndicate led by Barclays closed a $270 million secured revolving and tax-credit advance facility for battery manufacturer Form Energy, with an accordion to $1 billion.⁸

The lien-priority lesson of the week came from two software and specialty-manufacturing credits moving in opposite directions. Ares Capital Corp. led a first-out second-lien loan inside Symplr Software’s $175 million preferred-equity recapitalization, structuring its junior paper to sit ahead of other second-lien holders before Clearlake Capital Group and Charlesbank Capital Partners injected new equity.¹⁰,¹¹ Blue Owl Capital’s unprioritized second-lien position in packaging maker Loparex was not so fortunate: with Monarch Alternative Capital and General Atlantic’s roughly $1 billion recapitalization of Loparex working toward a Q4 close, Blue Owl disclosed its loan would be largely or fully wiped out, and OWL shares fell as much as 5% on September 24 — about 2.7 percentage points of which traders attributed directly to the Loparex marks.¹²,¹³ The backdrop turned more hawkish without a new Fed meeting to explain it: Governor Michael Barr told a Chicago housing conference on September 23 that “further policy adjustments are likely to be needed” to bring inflation to target, hours after S&P Global’s flash Composite PMI printed 58.4 — the fastest reading since July 2021 — and CME FedWatch-implied odds of an October hike jumped to nearly 70% from just 8.8% a month earlier.¹⁵,¹⁶,¹⁷ For asset-based lenders whose facilities just repriced off the Federal Reserve’s September 16 move to 3.75%–4.00%, the message is that the next 25 basis points may already be closer than borrowing-base models assume.

AirBoss Rebuilds Its Asset-Based Revolver to 2031 and Splits Collateral With Great Rock Capital

AirBoss of America announced on September 24 that it had amended and restated the senior secured credit facilities supporting its defense and industrial-rubber businesses, extending the maturity of both the revolving asset-based facility and a companion term loan to September 24, 2031 — a clean five-year runway from the closing date.¹ The Toronto-Dominion Bank continues to agent the revolving ABL tranche, while Great Rock Capital Partners, a non-bank specialty lender, was added to provide the term loan piece, preserving what the company described as a “split-collateral structure” in which the two facilities are secured against different pools of assets rather than sharing a single blanket lien.¹ Commitment sizes were not disclosed in the announcement, but the facility being refinanced traces back to a 2021 restructuring in which TD led a syndicate — National Bank of Canada, Comerica Bank, J.P. Morgan, Bank of Montreal, CIBC, and Royal Bank of Canada — around a $250 million revolver with a $75 million accordion, or up to $325 million of asset-based capacity, maturing this same week on September 23, 2026.²,³

The structural point for asset-based lenders is the timing and the split. AirBoss let its bank-led ABL facility mature into the same week it closed the replacement, and rather than simply re-syndicating the bank group, it brought in an independent term lender to sit alongside the revolver on a segregated collateral basis. Co-CEO Chris Bitsakakis called the result a facility that “extends our financing runway while reducing borrowing costs and providing greater flexibility to execute our business plan,” and the company specifically flagged an improved covenant package that gives it more room to pursue acquisitions.¹ That combination — a bank ABL agent retained for its deposit and cash-management relationship, a specialty finance shop layered in for stretch or fixed-asset collateral — is becoming a more common way for defense and industrial borrowers to add acquisition flexibility without forcing a full bank group to underwrite a bigger blanket facility.

For secured lenders evaluating similar defense-adjacent credits, the AirBoss refinancing is a reminder to price covenant flexibility and collateral segregation as separate line items in credit committee memos, not as a single “amend and extend.” A borrower that can add acquisition debt without tripping incremental-facility baskets is a materially different credit than one that cannot, even if headline pricing looks similar.

McGraw Hill Leans on Its Own ABL Line Inside a $1.48 Billion Refinancing

McGraw Hill announced on September 25 a proposed offering of $500 million in senior secured notes due 2033, the proceeds of which will redeem its outstanding 5.750% secured notes due 2028 and help fund a broader refinancing of its credit facilities.⁴ Alongside the notes, the company is refinancing its existing term loan into a new $830 million term loan B due 2033, replacing its cash-flow revolver with a new $150 million facility maturing in 2031, and — the detail asset-based lenders should note — extending the maturity of its existing senior secured ABL revolving credit agreement to 2031 as part of the same transaction.⁴,⁵ The refinancing follows a ratings upgrade from S&P Global Ratings — corporate family rating raised to BB- from B+, with the senior secured notes and first-lien facility moved to BB from BB- — detailed in a release published September 21, four days before the notes launch.⁶

What makes the McGraw Hill transaction instructive is the coexistence of instruments across the entire secured risk spectrum inside one refinancing: a cash-flow-based term loan B and unsecured-adjacent notes priced on enterprise value and EBITDA multiples, a general corporate-purpose cash-flow revolver, and an asset-based revolver priced and sized against a discrete borrowing base of receivables and inventory. Large-cap issuers increasingly treat the ABL tranche as a permanent, cheaper-cost layer of the capital structure rather than a bridge or a last resort — extended on essentially the same timeline as the cash-flow debt around it rather than negotiated separately.

Set against AirBoss’s pure asset-based-plus-term-loan structure earlier in the week, the two transactions bracket the market: a middle-market industrial borrower building acquisition flexibility around a split-collateral ABL and term facility, and a large-cap issuer folding its ABL line into a blended, ratings-driven refinancing. Both borrowers used the same week’s constructive credit conditions — the S&P upgrade for McGraw Hill, improved pricing for AirBoss — to lock in five-year-plus runways before the Federal Reserve’s next move.

Independent Lenders and a Seven-Bank Syndicate Show Where Secured Capacity Is Flowing

National CineMedia completed its acquisition of in-office and residential advertising network Captivate for $275.0 million in enterprise value, financed with a $275.0 million senior secured first-lien term loan facility, a $25.0 million senior secured revolving credit facility ($10 million drawn at closing), and cash on hand.⁷ The lenders were not banks or BDCs but independent commercial finance shops: Crestline Direct Finance, L.P. and Encina Commercial Finance, with Crestline acting as administrative and collateral agent.⁷ CEO Tom Lesinski said the combined company will operate more than 48,000 screens across theaters, offices, and residential properties in 185 markets — a business built on advertiser receivables and contract-based revenue streams that lend themselves to asset-based structuring even outside a traditional working-capital borrowing base.

Separately, battery manufacturer Form Energy closed a $270 million secured credit facility on September 21, combining a revolving credit facility with a tax-credit advance facility secured against Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Credits, with an accordion feature that can expand the total debt facility to as much as $1 billion.⁸ Barclays served as sole structuring bank and initial coordinating lead arranger, with a syndicate of Citi, Jefferies, JPMorgan Chase, RBC Capital Markets, Societe Generale, Stifel, and Wells Fargo joining as lenders.⁸,⁹ Proceeds support manufacturing scale-up and working capital at Form Energy’s iron-air battery plant in Weirton, West Virginia, and the financing follows an August equity raise that brought the company’s total equity funding above $2 billion.⁸

Read together, the two deals describe where secured capacity is actually flowing this year: independent lenders are comfortable underwriting acquisition financing secured by advertising and media receivables that banks once ceded to BDCs, while a full bank syndicate remains willing to structure a nine-figure secured facility against a novel collateral class — federal tax-credit receivables — for a pre-profitability industrial borrower, provided the credit is wrapped around identifiable, monetizable cash flows. For asset-based lenders, both are signals to widen the aperture on what counts as bankable collateral in 2026.

Ares Prices Priority Into Symplr’s Second Lien While Blue Owl’s Loparex Stake Gets Wiped Out

Two credits in distress this week illustrated why lien priority within a class matters as much as seniority between classes. At healthcare-compliance software company Symplr, private equity sponsors Clearlake Capital Group and Charlesbank Capital Partners agreed to inject $175 million of preferred equity as part of a broader recapitalization, with Ares Capital Corp. leading a $103.5 million first-out second-lien loan structured to rank ahead of other second-lien debt and made available to all junior-ranking lenders.¹⁰,¹¹ Clearlake and Charlesbank also agreed to defer interest payments on new junior-ranking debt to preserve cash, and the deal followed months of negotiation after Symplr’s debt traded at distressed levels amid concerns about artificial intelligence’s competitive impact on software businesses.¹⁰

At Loparex, the outcome for junior capital was considerably worse. Monarch Alternative Capital and General Atlantic’s Atlantic Park franchise are leading a roughly $1 billion recapitalization of the packaging and release-liner manufacturer, first announced September 8 and expected to close in the fourth quarter, that strengthens the company’s balance sheet and brings in new sponsor capital.¹⁴ Blue Owl Capital, which holds a junior loan position in Loparex through its business development company, disclosed that its exposure is expected to be “largely or fully wiped out” in the restructuring, retaining only a small sliver of equity in the reorganized entity.¹²,¹³ The news, combined with newly opened shareholder-litigation inquiries unrelated to Loparex, sent OWL shares down as much as 5% on September 24, with roughly 2.7 percentage points of that decline attributed specifically to the Loparex disclosure — part of a slide from about $12.24 in late August to roughly $9.12 by the end of the week, a decline of nearly 25%.¹³

The lesson for secured lenders is not that second-lien or junior capital is inherently unsafe — it is that priority has to be negotiated and documented within the junior tranche, not assumed from it. Ares protected its position by structuring a first-out second lien ahead of other junior holders before agreeing to defer cash pay; Blue Owl’s position, without that structuring, absorbed the full loss when the capital structure was rebuilt around it. Every intercreditor agreement covering a second-lien or unitranche-last-out piece should be re-read this quarter with the Loparex outcome specifically in mind.

Barr Pushes October Hike Odds to 70% as the PMI Hits a Five-Year High

With no FOMC meeting this week, the Federal Reserve’s most consequential September 22–26 event was a speech. Governor Michael Barr told a housing conference in Chicago on September 23 that “in my base case, further policy adjustments are likely to be needed to ensure inflation comes down to target in a timely fashion,” pointing to tariffs, the Middle East conflict, disruptions tied to Ukraine, and AI-driven investment demand as overlapping shocks that “have contributed to upward price pressures.”¹⁵ Barr characterized the Fed’s September 16 quarter-point increase to a 3.75%–4.00% target range as a needed recalibration — “we were out of position, and we made an adjustment in the right direction” — while acknowledging the economy is showing strong growth and a solid labor market.¹⁶

The data released the same week did little to soften that message. S&P Global’s flash U.S. Composite PMI Output Index came in at 58.4 for September, the fastest pace of private-sector growth since July 2021, accompanied by supply-chain bottlenecks and input costs rising at their steepest rate in four years.¹⁷,¹⁸ CME FedWatch-implied odds of an October 27–28 rate increase jumped to nearly 70% in the wake of Barr’s comments, up from just 8.8% a month earlier — one of the largest one-month swings in Fed pricing this cycle.¹⁶

For asset-based lenders, the practical implication is immediate: facilities that repriced off the September 16 move to SOFR-plus structures now face a real possibility of another 25-basis-point step-up in five weeks, not the extended pause many borrowing-base models assumed after a single hike. Credit committees should re-run covenant headroom and interest-coverage tests at 4.00%–4.25% now, rather than waiting for the October meeting to confirm it.

Equities Grind to a Winning Week as the Ten-Year Punches Through 5.2%

Equities absorbed the more hawkish Fed messaging without much resistance. The S&P 500 closed September 25 at 7,743.41, up 0.51% on the day, while the Nasdaq Composite finished at 27,068.72 (+0.48%) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 478.64 points, or 0.93%, to 51,828.62; all three indexes closed out a winning week despite the yield surge.²⁴,²⁵ Treasuries did the heavier work: the ten-year yield closed at 5.18%, having touched 5.225% intraday — its highest level since 2007 — while the thirty-year reached 5.502%, its highest since 2004.²⁴,²⁶ Crude oil eased, with the November contract settling at $92.41, down 2.33% on the day.²⁴

The week’s economic data reinforced the split-speed economy Barr described. Initial jobless claims fell to 197,000 for the week ended September 19, a decline of 1,000 and below the 201,000 economists expected, with continuing claims at 1.719 million and the unemployment rate holding at 4.1%.¹⁹,²⁰ Core capital goods orders — the best proxy for business investment — rose 1.6% month-over-month in August and 14.1% year-over-year to $88 billion, with machinery orders up 15.1% and computer and electronic products up 16.5% year-over-year, a pattern analysts tied directly to AI infrastructure buildout rather than broad-based manufacturing strength.²¹,²² New home sales, by contrast, rose 6.4% month-over-month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 684,000 units in August, but only because builders cut the median price 0.4% month-over-month and 5.8% year-over-year to $393,700 to move inventory sitting at an elevated 8.5 months’ supply — a sign that higher-for-longer mortgage rates are still constraining the rate-sensitive end of the economy even as capex-driven borrowers accelerate.²³

For asset-based lenders, the dispersion matters more than the index levels. Borrowing bases tied to industrial equipment, AI-adjacent manufacturing inventory, or capital-goods receivables are seeing genuine volume and price support; those tied to housing-linked receivables — building products distributors, home-improvement suppliers, construction-adjacent inventory — are being asked to defend advance rates against a rate-sensitive demand backdrop that has not improved since the Fed’s first hike.

Bain Takes SOLitude Independent as Sponsors Keep Writing Smaller Checks

Rentokil Initial agreed on September 22 to sell SOLitude Lake Management and Vertex Aquatic Solutions to Bain Capital for $230 million on a cash-free, debt-free basis, generating roughly $180 million of net cash proceeds after taxes; the deal is expected to close in early fourth quarter 2026 subject to Hart-Scott-Rodino clearance.²⁷ SOLitude generated $112 million of revenue and $16 million of adjusted operating profit in fiscal 2025, and CEO Mike Duffy framed the sale as part of Rentokil’s strategy of “greater simplification of the organisation” to strengthen its balance sheet and prioritize higher-opportunity markets.²⁷ The same day, Odyssey Investment Partners announced a strategic majority investment in Falcon Gases, a specialty industrial-gas distribution platform, continuing sponsors’ appetite for distribution and services businesses with recurring, asset-light revenue.²⁸

Sponsor activity below the headline level stayed active rather than spectacular through the week of September 18–24, according to ACG’s PE Weekly roundup: Sheridan Capital Partners backed physical-therapy practice-management software provider PtEverywhere; Lone View Capital acquired multifamily property-operations platform HappyCo; Butterfly Equity acquired global food-packaging manufacturer Sabert; and TJC agreed to acquire fiber-optic sensing company Luna Innovations, delisting it from the OTC Expert Market.²⁹ Add-on activity included Arlington Capital’s Everest Clinical Research acquiring the biometrics unit of Firma Clinical Research, Riverside-backed T3 Services Group adding residential HVAC, plumbing, and electrical platform Element Home Services, and Renovus Capital’s CloudFirst acquiring the IT and cyber managed-services practice divested by FORVIS Mazars.²⁹ On the exit side, Presidio Investors sold audiobook and digital-publishing platform Podium Entertainment to Flexpoint Ford and Shamrock Capital for approximately $400 million.²⁹

Financing terms went undisclosed on nearly every transaction this week, which is itself the signal: lower-middle-market sponsors continue to route these deals through private, bilateral direct-lending relationships rather than broadly syndicated processes, keeping pricing and structure out of the public record even as deal volume holds up. The corporate-carve-out pattern — Rentokil divesting SOLitude, FORVIS Mazars divesting an IT practice — is also worth tracking as a recurring source of new asset-based lending relationships as newly independent platforms need working-capital facilities for the first time.

FDIC’s Bank Merger Overhaul Opens for Comment as the Clock Starts on Five-Day Approvals

The FDIC’s proposed overhaul of its Bank Merger Act review framework — approved by the agency’s board on September 17 — formally published in the Federal Register on September 22, opening a 60-day public comment window.³¹ The rule would allow de minimis transactions to be deemed approved in as few as five business days, generally expedite corporate reorganizations to a 30-day review, extend expedited treatment to acquisitions of up to 25% of an acquiring institution’s assets (up from a 10% threshold), and cap standard review at 90 days for resulting institutions under $50 billion in assets and 150 days for larger institutions, extendable to a maximum of 180 or 270 days only in extenuating circumstances.³⁰

The proposal is aimed squarely at the roughly 2,700 state nonmember banks — out of about 4,500 FDIC-supervised institutions — that the agency believes are best positioned to benefit from faster, more predictable merger clearance, with particular emphasis on smaller transactions and rural-market consolidation.³⁰ For secured and asset-based lenders, faster bank-merger clearance is a double-edged signal: it should accelerate consolidation among community and regional banks that operate ABL and business-credit units, creating both acquisition opportunities for larger platforms and integration risk for borrowers whose relationship bank is absorbed mid-facility.

Credit teams at independent and bank-owned ABL shops alike should treat the November comment deadline as a checkpoint to flag facilities with regional-bank agents that could plausibly be acquisition targets under the new expedited thresholds, and to pressure-test whether existing change-of-control and assignment provisions in loan documentation adequately protect borrower relationships through a faster-moving merger process.

Items to Discuss in Your Monday Meetings

Stress-Test Every SOFR-Indexed Facility Against an October Hike, Not Just the September One. CME FedWatch-implied odds of an October 27–28 increase jumped to nearly 70% this week after Governor Barr’s comments and a five-year-high PMI reading.¹⁶,¹⁷ Re-run covenant headroom, fixed-charge coverage, and borrowing-base availability at a 4.00%–4.25% funds rate now, rather than waiting for confirmation at the next meeting.

Re-Read Every Second-Lien and Last-Out Intercreditor Agreement This Quarter. Ares priced explicit priority into its first-out second lien at Symplr before the recapitalization closed; Blue Owl’s unprioritized second-lien position at Loparex is being largely or fully wiped out in the same week.¹⁰,¹²,¹³ Confirm which side of that structure your junior-lien exposure sits on before the next distressed credit forces the question.

Treat Split-Collateral Structures With Independent Term Lenders as a Template, Not an Exception. AirBoss’s amended facility pairs a bank-agented ABL revolver with a Great Rock Capital term loan on segregated collateral pools, and McGraw Hill kept its own ABL line intact inside a much larger blended refinancing.¹,⁴ Expect more middle-market and large-cap borrowers alike to negotiate ABL tranches as a permanent, separately priced layer of the capital structure rather than a bridge facility.

Map Regional-Bank ABL Relationships Against the FDIC’s New Expedited Thresholds. With de minimis bank mergers eligible for five-business-day approval and the 25%-of-assets expedited threshold more than double the prior 10% cap, community and regional banks that agent ABL facilities are more plausible acquisition targets starting this comment period.³⁰,³¹ Confirm assignment and change-of-control language protects borrowers if an agent bank changes hands mid-facility.

Segment Borrowing Bases by Capex Exposure Versus Housing Sensitivity. Core capital goods orders rose 14.1% year-over-year on AI infrastructure demand while new home sales needed a 5.8% year-over-year price cut to move volume.²¹,²³ Borrowers with equipment, machinery, or AI-adjacent manufacturing inventory are in a genuinely different demand environment than those tied to housing-linked receivables — advance rates and eligibility criteria should reflect that divergence explicitly.

Conclusion

The week’s secured-lending activity made a consistent argument even though no single deal dominated the headlines. AirBoss and McGraw Hill both chose this week to lock in five-year-plus maturities on their asset-based revolvers — one by adding an independent term lender on segregated collateral, the other by folding its ABL line into a much larger, ratings-driven refinancing — while independent lenders and a seven-bank syndicate proved willing to underwrite secured capacity against both acquisition financing and novel collateral like federal tax credits.¹,⁴,⁷,⁸ The Symplr and Loparex outcomes, arriving in the same week, are as close to a controlled experiment on lien-priority documentation as secured lenders are likely to get this year.¹⁰,¹² All of it now sits against a materially more hawkish rate backdrop than existed a month ago: Governor Barr’s comments and a five-year-high PMI pushed October hike odds from single digits to nearly seventy percent in a matter of weeks, and asset-based lenders who spent September repricing off one hike should not assume they are finished repricing before Halloween.¹⁶,¹⁷

Footnotes

1. AirBoss Announces Amended and Restated Credit Facilities, GlobeNewswire, https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/09/24/3368777/0/en/airboss-announces-amended-and-restated-credit-facilities.html
2. AirBoss Announces New Credit Facilities (background: 2021 facility terms), AirBoss of America Corp., https://airboss.com/airboss-announces-new-credit-facilities/
3. AirBoss renews credit facilities through 2031, StockTitan, https://www.stocktitan.net/news/ABSSF/air-boss-announces-amended-and-restated-credit-9q0mofz0rn4z.html
4. McGraw Hill, Inc. Announces Proposed Offering of Senior Secured Notes and Refinancing of Credit Facilities, Business Wire, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260924882684/en/McGraw-Hill-Inc.-Announces-Proposed-Offering-of-Senior-Secured-Notes-and-Refinancing-of-Credit-Facilities
5. McGraw Hill Plans $500M Notes Offering, Refinancing, StockTitan, https://www.stocktitan.net/news/MH/mc-graw-hill-inc-announces-proposed-offering-of-senior-secured-notes-a149wuukud96.html
6. S&P Global Ratings Upgrades McGraw Hill, Business Wire, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260921942365/en/SP-Global-Ratings-Upgrades-McGraw-Hill
7. National CineMedia, Inc. Completes Acquisition of Captivate, Business Wire, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260921899564/en/National-CineMedia-Inc.-Completes-Acquisition-of-Captivate
8. Form Energy Announces Closing of $270M Credit Facility, GlobeNewswire, https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/09/21/3365616/0/en/form-energy-announces-closing-of-270m-credit-facility.html
9. Kirkland Advises Form Energy on Close of $270 Million Credit Facility, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, https://www.kirkland.com/news/press-release/2026/09/kirkland-advises-form-energy-on-close-of-$270-million-credit-facility
10. Symplr Software gets $175M equity injection from PE backers — Bloomberg, Investing.com, https://ca.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/symplr-software-gets-175m-equity-injection-from-pe-backers–bloomberg-93CH-4846858
11. Distressed Software Firm Symplr to Get Injection From Private Equity Backers, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-21/distressed-software-firm-symplr-to-get-injection-from-private-equity-backers
12. Blue Owl Capital (OWL) Faces Loparex Test As Undervalued Narrative Holds, Yahoo Finance, https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/blue-owl-capital-owl-faces-131559593.html
13. OWL Stock Slides As Legal Probes And Loan Loss Rattle Traders, StocksToTrade, https://stockstotrade.com/news/blue-owl-capital-inc-owl-news-2026_09_24/
14. Loparex Announces Comprehensive Recapitalization and Strategic Capital Support to Advance Next Stage of Growth, Loparex, https://loparex.com/loparex-announces-comprehensive-recapitalization-and-strategic-capital-support-to-advance-next-stage-of-growth/
15. Fed’s Barr says future interest rate hikes ‘likely’ needed to tame inflation, Yahoo Finance, https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/fed-barr-says-future-interest-231250129.html
16. October Fed Rate Hike Odds Jump To Nearly 70% As Fed’s Barr Says More Tightening Is ‘Likely’, Stocktwits, https://stocktwits.com/news-articles/markets/equity/october-fed-rate-hike-odds-jump-to-nearly-70-as-fed-s-barr-says-more-tightening-is-likely/cZM7mivRBB0
17. US flash PMI signals fastest growth for over five years in September, S&P Global Market Intelligence, https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2026/09/us-flash-pmi-signals-fastest-growth-for-over-five-years-in-september
18. US Growth Hits Five-Year High: PMI 58.4 Complicates Fed’s Next Rate Call, Tech Times, https://www.techtimes.com/articles/327930/20260923/us-growth-hits-five-year-high-pmi-584-complicates-feds-next-rate-call.htm
19. US Jobless Claims Slip to 197,000, Remain Historically Low, Bloomberg, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-24/us-jobless-claims-slip-to-197-000-hold-close-to-historic-lows
20. Claims for Unemployment Benefits Drop to 197,000, the Lowest Since Mid-July as Layoffs Remain Rare, U.S. News & World Report, https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2026-09-24/claims-for-unemployment-benefits-drop-to-197-000-the-lowest-since-mid-july-as-layoffs-remain-rare
21. WHOOSH, Go Orders at US Manufacturers of “Core Capital Goods,” Fueled by the AI Infrastructure Boom, Wolf Street, https://wolfstreet.com/2026/09/25/whoosh-go-orders-at-us-manufacturers-of-core-capital-goods-fueled-by-the-ai-infrastructure-boom/
22. Monthly Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders, August 2026, U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/manufacturing/m3/adv/pdf/durgd.pdf
23. New Home Sales Rise as Affordability Challenges Continue, National Association of Home Builders, https://www.nahb.org/news-and-economics/press-releases/2026/09/new-home-sales-rise-as-affordability-challenges-continue
24. Stock Market Today (Sept. 25, 2026): S&P 500 and Nasdaq end the week higher as fresh tech optimism lifts market, Yahoo Finance, https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/stock-market-today-sept-25-134126022.html
25. Dow jumps more than 470 points Friday; stocks notch winning week despite Treasury yield surge, CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/24/stock-market-today-live-updates.html
26. Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates, September 2026, U.S. Department of the Treasury, https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/TextView?type=daily_treasury_yield_curve&field_tdr_date_value_month=202609
27. Announcement of Sale of SOLitude Lake Management, LLC to Bain Capital, Rentokil Initial plc, https://www.rentokil-initial.com/media/news-releases/2026/solitude.aspx
28. Falcon Gases Announces Strategic Majority Investment from Odyssey Investment Partners, Business Wire, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260922337318/en/Falcon-Gases-Announces-Strategic-Majority-Investment-from-Odyssey-Investment-Partners
29. PE Weekly: M&A Roundup, Sept. 18-24, 2026, Middle Market Growth (Association for Corporate Growth), https://middlemarketgrowth.org/pe-weekly-september-18-24-2026/
30. FDIC Issues Proposal on Bank Merger Transactions, Signaling Modernized Approach to Merger Review, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2026/09/fdic-issues-proposal-on-bank-merger-transactions
31. Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Merger Transactions, Federal Register (September 22, 2026), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-09-22/pdf/2026-19308.pdf