The Data Tapes

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

October 02, 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

  • 🤝 On the road this fall - let's connect. We’re attending a number of industry events in the coming months. Here are two upcoming conferences where we’d love to meet.

  • 🌆 Upcoming Setpoint Events:

    • Capital Conversations: After Hours — Oct. 15: Setpoint and One William Street are teaming up to host an evening of conversations, connections and cocktails in one of Manhattan’s most intimate speakeasy lounges. This is an exclusive opportunity to connect with leaders from across the asset-backed finance world. Apply to attend.

    • Capital Conversations: On the Water — Nov. 6: Join Setpoint and Comvest Credit Partners for drinks and bites along Miami’s riverside as the sun sets. This open-air gathering will bring together investors, capital providers and borrowers from across the ABF ecosystem — you don’t want to miss it. Apply to attend.

💸 Debt Financings & Acquisitions

💰️Platform Growth

📈 Visuals

🗣️ Market Commentary

  • “PIK and interest deferral are the canaries in the coal mine. The way the direct lending ecosystem is set up — where collateral managers are originators working closely with sponsors and businesses — it feels natural to have higher PIK-ing through the cycle. If you look towards the future, there will be more participants in the private credit CLO market. If you have growth from platforms that have raised money and give them the time to originate, once those books of business scale, you’re going to see more inaugural issuance from the names you’re familiar with.” -  Ian Gilbertson, co-head of US CLOs at Invesco Ltd on Growth of Private Credit CLO Market

  • “An estimated 9.6 million new homes—about 3.5% of the current stock—are needed just to meet demand across Europe. The shortage has driven prices up. The average London home in 2022, for example, cost 13.9 times the typical household’s income, according to the Office for National Statistics. Across Europe, prices in many jurisdictions are at or above the 2008 peaks from just before the global financial crisis. We think the deep structural supply-demand imbalances across Europe will limit price declines for new housing—even if there’s a recession. Meanwhile, first-loss provisions that apply to developers for this kind of development lending suggest manageable credit risk for private lenders and experienced asset-based finance managers who know their way around this type of financing.” - Neil Hepworth and Rob Sinclair, AB CarVal on Private Credit’s role in addressing the EU housing shortage 

  • “Going back to the Crestline acquisition: one is it all starts with the people. I mean this organization, Doug Bratton and Keith Williams have built a great company. They’re extremely well thought of in the investment community by LPs. I have been public about, I think our credit business collectively is a little bit under-scaled. So when you look at the acquisition of Crestline, and you think about Sculptor, and you think about what we have going on at Rithm, all of a sudden our credit business becomes a $35B credit business. One of the main things when we sit down with LPs - LPs don’t need another 5 managers doing the same thing. But when you sit down with somebody and have a good track record and most importantly are good people, I think what you’re going to find is having a broader suite of products to offer to a specific LP is going to enable us to bring in more AUM. Going back to Crestline, what do you get there? We got a direct lending business. We don’t have that at Rithm or Sculptor. We got a NAV lending business. We don’t have that at Rithm or Sculptor. We have an insurance business, a reinsurance business, and a BDC. None of those are areas that we really had.”.  - Michael Nierenberg, CEO of Rithm Capital on the rationale for the Crestline acquisition

📖 What We’re Reading & Listening To

Invester Presentations

  • Ares Research Analyst Teach-In (Ares)

Reading

  • Alternative Credit: The Rise of Consumer Lending (CFA Institute)

  • Asset Based Finance Investment Series (MA Asset Management)

  • Global Private Debt Report (Pitchbook)

  • Insurers are Embracing Private Credit Like It’s the 1920s, Blackstone’s Sherrill Says (Bloomberg)

  • Outlook for US Banks (Apollo)

  • Student Loan Debt Is Strangling Gen X (WSJ)

  • The American Consumer: Resilient, But Not Uniform (Rithm)

  • The Credit Market Is Humming - and That Has Wall Street On Edge (WSJ)

  • The Power of Credit (KKR)

Podcasts & Interviews

  • 21st Century Investing Strategies from Dmitry Balyasny (Masters in Business)

  • Blackstone’s Jon Gray on The Economy, AI as “The Main Thing,” and Where to Invest Now (Blackstone)

  • Dylan Patel - Inside the Trillion Dollar AI Buildout (Invest Like the Best)

  • Going Public with Glenn Schorr - Ep. 4: Unpacking the Past Few Months in Private Markets (Alt Goes Mainstream)

  • Private Credit Has Won the Buyout Financing Game - Churchill’s Randy Schwimmer (Credit Exchange)

  • Rithm’s Michael Nierenberg on M&A, Recasting Perceptions (Bloomberg FICC Focus)

  • Temasek CEO: Investing for the Future, Navigating Geopolitics and Building Trust (In Good Company)