The Data Tapes

Setpoint's Bite-Sized Debt Newsletter: March Edition I

March 05, 2025

The Latest in ABS and Debt Markets

Welcome to The Data Tapes—your biweekly snapshot of private credit and ABS markets. In each edition, we bring you concise updates on debt financings, platform fundraises, data insights, market trends, and the latest from Setpoint.

🚀 What’s New at Setpoint

  • Cast your vote: We’re honored to be shortlisted for “Securitization Tech Provider of the Year” at the GlobalCapital US Securitization Awards 2025! Voting closes March 12 - cast your vote here.

  • SFVegas 2025 Recap: That’s a wrap on SFVegas 2025! Great conversations last week, capped off with our CEO Stuart Wall speaking on the Next-Gen Securitization: The Tech Transformations Ahead panel—where he shared how machine learning-driven asset allocation is reshaping structured finance. Check out his take here.

💸 Debt Financings & Acquisitions

💰️Platform Growth

📈 Visuals

 🗣️ Market Commentary

  • “Asset-backed finance is going to be a big growth area within the private markets. The addressable market is about $5-25T. Nobody’s sure exactly where it is, but we think it’s on the higher end of that. [The asset-backed finance space] is a growing area. It’s an area where we do have tailwinds when it comes to the regulatory environment. We’ve been partnering with a lot of banks. And I think we’re going to see more growth there. It’s an expansion of [private credit]. You’re taking a traditional public product - a securitized product - and you’re bringing it to the private market. And I think you’re going to see more and more of that. “ - Lindsay LoBue, Carlyle COO on the Asset-based Finance opportunity 

  • “People are willing to do private credit now. They’re eager to do private credit. So the reward from private credit has come down, as has the reward from public credit, as has the reward from investing in stocks. Two and a half years ago, we were in a period when people were pessimistic, most people didn’t want to step forward, and the few people who did step forward had great opportunities to get bargains. Today, most people are unworried, they’re perfectly willing to step forward, which means the reward for stepping forward is less.” - Howard Marks, Oaktree Co-Chairman on the lack of bargains in private credit 

  • “The data center buildout really only started 10 years ago and it was just getting started for the cloud. Then the Chat GPT moment happened and the amount of increase in requirement to train models and for learning is very, very significant and we're talking trillions and trillions, so the opportunity for us as as we've always tried to um move the our backbone of the global economy along with what's changing in the world and increasingly today the world is digitalizing and the final step of all that is providing compute capacity. And so we continue to work on opportunities like that but these are large large sums of money. Some of these sites like a one thousand megawatt, 1 Gigawatt data center site with power to compute capacity all the way through is $50 billion. These are almost unprecedented investments ever seen in the last in hundreds of years.” - Bruce Flatt, Brookfield CEO on the data center opportunity fueled by AI 

  • “The asset management industry started from nothing 30 years ago. There are 5 - 7 big players today. Some of us have done acquisitions to add in other sources of skills into the businesses. We've done some, others have done some. It's never one size never fits all but but there's going to be some very large players - we’re one of those - and then there's going to be some niche players that fit a certain area. What's happening in the middle is, so far in the last 18-24 rounds it hasn't been easy for them to raise money. We raised $135 billion last year in our asset management business. Not many others can raise that type of capital.” - Bruce Flatt, Brookfield CEO on benefits to scale in asset management 

  • “One other factor contributing to the acceleration of private asset-based finance is the growing size, scale and sophistication of firms within the asset management community. Before the crisis, the syndication of risk across a broad array of firms was necessary to complete transactions. Today, a single asset manager typically has the purchasing power and the diversity of capital across its client base to execute an entire transaction by themselves. Asset sourcing is a zero-sum game so we’re seeing managers move further upstream, often bypassing banks, in a race to lock up assets directly from originators. Those with the scale to write big checks, the sophistication to execute complex transactions, and the financial creativity to offer something unique will continue to grow.” - Gabe Rivera, PGIM Co-Head of Securitized Products

📖 What We’re Reading & Listening To