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

• Customer Spotlight: Richard Porteous, Backflip's VP of Capital Markets, shares how Setpoint enabled 10x faster fundings to support their growth. Watch the story here.

• Capital Conversations: Thanks to everyone who joined us last week for our happy hour at Bergamo’s. Sign up here to stay in the loop on our next one!

• Heading to SFVegas? We’d love to meet you! Share your details here to set up a time to connect.

💸 Debt Financings & Acquisitions

• Brex, a corporate card and spend management platform, closed a $235M revolving credit facility with Citi and TPG Angelo Gordon to finance corporate its corporate card product.

• CardWorks, a credit and payments company, alongside its wholly-owned bank subsidiary, Merrick Bank, agreed to acquire Ally’s credit card business including a portfolio of $2.3B in credit card receivables with 1.3M active cardholders. 

• Divvy Homes, a rent-to-own platform, is being acquired by Maymount Homes, a division of Brookfield Properties that manages a portfolio of single-family residential homes. 

• Duckfund, a digital commercial real estate financing platform, closed a $100M credit facility with Clear Haven. 

• eCapital, a middle market ABL platform, announced the acquisition of LSQ, a working capital finance platform.  

• EquipmentShare, an equipment rental and asset management platform, closed a $197.5M structured equity investment with MidOcean Partners to support a $797.5M sale-leaseback transaction. 

• Exeter, an auto finance platform, is preparing to sell $1.1B in auto ABS secured by a pool of non-prime retail installment auto contracts in its inaugural 2025 issuance. 

• Float, a Canadian business banking and corporate card, raised a $70M Series B led by Goldman Sachs. 

• Global Lending Services, a consumer auto finance platform, is raising $290.5M in an auto ABS secured by prime retail installment loans. 

• Lendbuzz, a consumer auto finance platform, closed a $261.9M ABS issuance in its first transaction of 2025. 

• MassMutual Asset Finance, an equipment finance platform, prepares for a $868M ABS issuance through Barings Equipment Finance 2025-A. 

• Octane, a fintech platform for recreational purchases, originated more than $1.6B in 2024, a 36% increase year-over-year, and exceed $5B in aggregate originations since inception. 

• OneMain, a consumer finance platform, announced its first $500M ABS issuance of 2025 secured by a pool of direct auto loans. 

• Oportun, a consumer finance platform, announced a $425M ABS issuance secured by a pool of installment loans. 

• RLTYco, a commission advance platform for real estate agents, closed a $12.5M credit facility with Altriarch Asset Management. 

• SoFi, a consumer banking and lending platform, announced a $525M personal loan securitization agreement with FGIM Fixed Income.

• Stockdale Capital Partners closed a $165M mortgage loan from Marathon Asset Management to fund the acquisition of The Oaks, a Class A mall located in Thousand Oaks, CA. 

• Stonebriar Commercial Finance, a secured commercial finance platform owned by Eldridge, is going to market with its 13th ABS issuance of $959.9M secured by a portfolio of equipment leases. 

• Stream, a point of sale finance platform for the home improvement industry, closed a $250M forward flow agreement with 26North. 

• Tradable, a platform that allows asset managers to tokenize IG opportunities on the blockchain, tokenized $1.7B in assets across 30 institutional-grade private credit positions. Tradable is backed by Victory Park. 

💰️Platform Growth

• Aperture Investors hires Vladimir Lemin to lead its newly launched structured credit business.

• Apollo to acquire Argo Infrastructure Partners, a $6B AUM mid-market asset manager targeting essential infrastructure assets in North America. 

• Apollo and Standard Chartered form a $3B financing partnership for Global Infrastructure and Energy Transition Credit.

• Ares raises €30 Billion for European Direct Lending strategy. 

• BPCE and Generali announce an MOU to create a JV between Generali Investments and Natixis Investment Managers to create the largest asset manager in Europe by revenue. 

• Colbeck Capital raises $700M for its third flagship fund to provide senior secured loans to unsponsored, asset-heavy, cash flow generating middle market companies. 

• Generali to acquire a 77% stake in MGG, a $6B AUM US private direct lending firm, for $320M.

• MA Financial raises $106M for a listed private credit fund. 

• Medalist Partners is raising its fourth asset-based lending fund, targeting $750M. 

• Ramirez Asset Management acquires the $500M private capital strategy team from Avenue Capital.

📈 Visuals

 🗣️ Market Commentary

• “Artificial intelligence is powered by data, and in recent years total data generation has been doubling every three years. Between 2010 and 2025, data created, consumed and stored will have increased over 100x. All of this data needs a place to live, which in turn has unlocked enormous need for data centers. And it isn’t just AI—social media, cloud migration, content creation and media streaming are all contributing to more data. Meeting this demand and fully capturing the AI opportunity will require an estimated $2 trillion in global digital infrastructure investment by 2030. This AI infrastructure opportunity isn’t limited to just equity ownership or data centers. Blackstone is also one of the most active lenders to data centers and invests in adjacent sectors like backup battery storage, cooling systems, and semiconductor chips—critical components for operational resilience.” - Ken Caplan with Kristin Roesch, Blackstone

• “Banks are increasingly retrenching from holding asset-based portfolios given a mismatch in duration between these assets and their deposits, leading to potential risks absent an effective hedging strategy. Additionally, recent regulations have provided an additional tailwind to the theme, as banks now take a significant capital charge on asset-based holdings while being required to mark these assets at a discount. This has led many banks to seek to sell their asset-based portfolios to more appropriate long-term investors, creating a growing opportunity for managers. Notably, the estimated addressable market within asset-based finance is believed to be nearly $11T, with private markets currently accounting for only approximately 4% of that, highlighting the high potential for growth. We believe that private market penetration of alternative credit will likely double to 8% over the next five years while the overall market continues to expand.” - Doug Ostrover and Marc Kipschultz, Co-CEOs of Blue Owl

• “One large strategic opportunity we are particularly focused on relates to financing. Goldman Sachs operates the fulcrum of one of the most important structural trends currently taking place in finance. The emergence and growth of our private credit and other asset classes that can be privately deployed. Our unique origination capabilities position us to both connect companies' dependable capital and connect investors to assets that can produce superior returns.” - David Solomon, Goldman Sachs

• “We did not do the HPS acquisition as a singular expansion. You have to overlay the design around buying Preqin and having eFront, and bringing that together and having the ability to provide better data and analytics to these markets to -- and that will then provide much more expansion of the market. And we've seen that over the last 40-odd years we've been in business and throughout my career.” - Lary Fink, BlackRock

📖 What We’re Reading & Listening To

• 2025 Market Outlook, from Blue Owl. 

• 2025 Private Credit Outlook, from Percent.

• Alternative Investments in 2025: Our top five themes to watch, from JPM Private Bank.

• Analysis of recent Stonebriar and Reach ABS issuances, from our friend Rohit Mittal. 

• Aviation Finance: The outlook for Business in 2025, from Vinson & Elkins.

• Building the Future: Megatrends and Investment Themes, from Blackstone.

• Concord: Largest-Ever Music ABS Transaction, a case study from Apollo.  

• CRE’s Outlook: State of Distressed Debt, with Keerthi Raghavan from Waterfall. 

• Goldman expands private credit ambitions with major overhaul, from Institutional Investor. 

• Q1 2025 Quarterly Market Outlook, from Matthew Pallai at Nomura. 

• Q4 Bank & Asset Manager Earnings: JPM, BAC, WFC, GS, BlackRock

• Opportunities in Asset-based Finance and Consumer Credit, from Aaron Fink at Centerbridge. 

• Private Credit Outlook: Expanding the Universe, from Matthew Bass at Alliance Bernstein.