Welcome to the third edition of our Guide to Private Credit in Europe.
The European market for sub-investment grade corporate credit is now well established. This has been driven in large part by the ongoing move towards direct lenders as a growing source of debt financing. A wide array of private debt products are now available to borrowers in addition to, or as an alternative to, traditional bank lending.
This shift looks set to continue in light of the ongoing instability and uncertainty in the economic landscape and a challenging environment for the capital markets, as well as legislative changes in domestic insolvency processes / deregulation. The factors are encouraging corporates to recapitalise or restructure without using traditional funding sources. With direct lenders raising ever larger funds and having the flexibility to deploy across the credit spectrum on bigger and bigger transactions, they continue to further take the place of the capital markets by presenting borrowers with a stable source of capital when more traditional lenders may be looking to retrench.
At a pan-European level, the recast European insolvency regulation overlay continues to seek to regulate forum shopping and to rebalance the interests of creditors and debtors in securing certainty of outcome when things go wrong. All the while, political pressure is reducing flexibility to mitigate tax liabilities and increasing demand for regulatory transparency from counterparties across the capital structure.
This Guide to Private Credit in Europe includes key issues for consideration in private credit transactions and cross-border lending across 13 jurisdictions, providing both a high-level overview and a more detailed jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction analysis.
To read this Guide in full, please click here.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
