Key Takeaways
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- Michael Dell’s family office sees the current private-credit turmoil as a buying opportunity, not just a risk event.
- The strategy is focused on finding high-quality assets sold at discounts by investors facing liquidity pressure.
- The firm expects much more activity in the private-credit secondary market as redemptions rise and sellers are forced to exit.
- The outlook suggests a market with growing dispersion, where weak assets may struggle but stronger credits could become attractive buys.
What Happened?
Alisa Mall, chief investment officer of Michael Dell’s family office, said the recent disruption in private-credit markets is creating opportunities to buy attractive assets at discounted prices. Her view is that the market is entering a phase where not all private-credit investments will perform the same, which means careful asset selection will matter much more. Rather than pulling back entirely, Dell’s family office is looking for what Mall described as “gems” being sold by non-economic sellers that need liquidity.
The backdrop is a wave of redemption pressure across private credit, driven partly by investor anxiety around lending practices and exposure to businesses vulnerable to AI disruption. Mall argued that a lot of the current stress is more sentiment-driven than purely fundamental and said mismatches between investor expectations for liquidity and the actual structure of private-credit products are adding to the pressure.
Why It Matters?
This matters because it shows how sophisticated capital is beginning to shift from defense to selective offense in private credit. Instead of treating the sector’s stress as a reason to avoid the space entirely, Dell’s family office sees it as a chance to exploit forced selling and buy stronger businesses below intrinsic value. For investors, that is an important signal that the next phase of private credit may be less about broad asset-class growth and more about differentiation between good and bad underwriting.
It also highlights the growing importance of the secondary market. As more investors seek liquidity, private-credit secondaries could become a much larger and more active part of the market. That creates both risk and opportunity: weaker managers and lower-quality assets may face deeper pressure, while disciplined buyers with long-term capital may be able to pick up mispriced exposure at attractive entry points.
What’s Next?
The next thing to watch is how fast private-credit secondary activity expands and whether redemption pressure spreads further across the market. Investors should also watch default trends over the next two years, since Mall suggested defaults are likely to rise in 2027 and 2028. That means today’s opportunity set could widen further, but only for buyers with the patience and underwriting skill to separate temporary dislocation from permanent impairment.
The broader takeaway is that private credit is moving into a more selective phase. The easy-money period favored broad participation, but the next cycle may reward investors who can provide liquidity when others cannot.
