Brendan Pack, Managing Director for Jefferies Credit Partners, joined Julie Cooling, Founder and CEO of RIA Channel, to discuss the benefits of sourcing private credit deals directly through investment banking relationships.
Jefferies Credit Partners is housed within Jefferies Finance, the investment bank’s direct lending arm. This team gets the opportunity to provide direct lending services to investment banking clients up to eight weeks before competing lenders can see the deal. While the group evaluates many deals sourced from within and outside Jefferies, it is selective about which it chooses to fund.
Jefferies may be the last investment bank to focus on the middle market. Primarily, the bank serves upper-middle-market companies, typically those with EBITDA over $225 million. Pack believes investors will likely always demand private credit, as senior-secured loans offer competitive returns at the lower end of the credit risk spectrum. While portfolios allocated 60% to equity and 40% to fixed income may still be widely used, Pack suggests dedicating a portion of both the equity and fixed-income allocations to private-market strategies, which add diversification.
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