Sou Hu Cai Jing·2025-12-22 09:48Group 1 - The U.S. private credit market, once marketed as a "high-dividend safe haven," is now facing severe challenges due to high interest rates, a wave of defaults, and liquidity issues [2] - Blue Owl Capital, managing $180 billion in assets, abruptly withdrew from a $10 billion financing negotiation with Oracle, citing execution risks and Oracle's high leverage, which led to a spike in Oracle's five-year CDS to the highest level since 2009 [2] - The confidence in the "off-balance-sheet financing" model for AI infrastructure has plummeted, jeopardizing the capital expenditure chain of tech giants [2] Group 2 - Business Development Companies (BDCs) targeting retail investors have experienced a "double whammy" this year, with FS KKR Capital's stock price dropping by 33% and BlackRock BDC's default rate rising to 7% [2] - The VanEck BDC ETF has underperformed the S&P 500 by over 20 percentage points this year, indicating significant distress in the sector [2] - BDCs, which once promised monthly dividends, now derive 14% of their income from "payment-in-kind" (PIK), suggesting borrowers are unable to pay cash interest [2] Group 3 - A liquidity trap has emerged, as Blue Owl's attempt to merge private BDCs with public BDCs to alleviate redemption pressure was rejected by shareholders due to a 14% discount to net asset value, resulting in the deal's failure [2] - There is a significant disconnect between public market prices and private valuations, leaving retail investors unable to exit their positions and witnessing the evaporation of their principal [3] - Jamie Dimon's earlier warning about seeing "a cockroach" now appears to be just a glimpse of a larger issue within the $2 trillion private credit market, where retail investors are the last to join but the first to bear the losses [3]