Unlocking the Backlog: Can PE Work Out From Under Long-Held Portcos and Reignite Middle Market M&A?
Private equity is sitting on the largest inventory of unrealized portfolio companies in the industry’s history, and the pressure to...
Forward for Specialty Finance
The Loss Rate Advantage: Why Direct Lending Continues to Outperform Public Credit Markets
The case for direct lending has always rested on a deceptively simple proposition: private credit should deliver better risk-adjusted returns...
The Rise of Layered Capital Structures in Middle Market Finance
The binary choice between senior secured bank debt and mezzanine financing is fading from the middle market. In its place,...
The Rise of Insurance-Linked Capital in Private Credit
Insurance companies have become among the most consequential new participants in private credit, drawn by a structural alignment that the...
Cross-Border Capital Flows in Middle Market Private Credit
The middle market private credit opportunity has historically been a North American story. That is changing in ways that are...
The PIK Divide: Separating Structural Flexibility from Shadow Distress in Private Credit
As of the first quarter of 2025, 11 percent of debt investments tracked by Lincoln International carried some form of...
The Dividend Recap Surge: What Record Sponsor Payouts Reveal About the Exit Impasse
Through the first eleven months of 2025, PE-backed companies issued $70.2 billion in leveraged loans earmarked for dividend recapitalizations —...
Basel III Endgame Delays Prolong Uncertainty for Middle Market Lenders
Nearly three years after U.S. regulators first proposed sweeping changes to bank capital requirements, the Basel III Endgame rule remains...
Machine Intelligence Meets Middle Market Lending: The Quiet Transformation of Credit Underwriting
While artificial intelligence reshapes commercial lending at every scale, the middle market’s adoption path reflects its own distinctive blend of...
The Covenant Divide: Why Financial Protections Are Holding Firm in the Lower Middle Market
As covenant-lite structures dominate large-cap transactions, the core middle market tells a fundamentally different story—one where lender protections remain robust...
