James Kirby

Thanks, James.

Lovely to be here.

Good to have you on the show again.

I think most of our listeners will probably have some idea and probably have aspired to get involved in private credit if they haven't already.

We know there is, we're just starting to realise basically that a lot of the wealth managers and big names in Australia in wealth managers are

including people in the very top ranks of the Barron's advisor list, have made arrangements and have basically been putting clients or suggesting to them or recommending to them in various ways that they go into private credit.

This was largely because so much money had seemed to be made by the big super funds and future fund in private credit in recent times.

But the problem perhaps, and we'll explore this in the show, is the old adage, if you can see the bandwagon,

Might be too late, but just explain.

Maybe it isn't too late.

Tell us about private credit.

Why did it suddenly become so popular?

And these gigantic names, BlackRock, Blackstone, Apollo, and of course, Blue Owl being this sort of, well, perhaps for a while, the sort of golden child of private equity.

It now has all sorts of problems, and I suppose it encapsulates their problems of the sector with a 50% folks share price slide in the US.

I just want to ask you, Andy, broadly to the everyday investor, not completely across how all this works, what is wrong at Blue Owl, and why do you think its shares have halved?

Mom and dad, as we call them.

I suppose it's worth, again, explaining, folks, if you aren't familiar with this area, but you're probably familiar with the notion of unlisted funds.

this is what it is really so so it can be listed on the share market but in essence at core this is where organizations finance business but the funds that you and i invest in are unlisted and the business is private to that degree it is not as transparent as say commonwealth bank right so if you want to find out what commonwealth bank are doing

Well, you can take a deep dive into their annual accounts and you can find out a hell of a lot.

But you can't find out the same level of information in the private credit space.