Investors have yanked more than $11 billion out of private-credit funds during the past two quarters. Offsetting that, the funds have brought in $12.4 billion in new money in the past five months through February, though the rate is slowing.
KKR bought a majority stake in 2023 when CoolIT was valued at around $270 million. The firm is now set to make roughly 15 times the equity it invested. The transaction will represent one of the firm’s top returning investments over the past 20 years.
There are about 430,000 U.S. households worth $30 million or more. Within that, there are about 74,000 worth $100 million or more. Over the past few decades, the growth in the number of very rich households has surpassed general population growth.
Software debt accounts for around 30% of all private-credit loans outstanding, while bank-originated debts hover around 10%.
Traders now see a 47% chance of a rate cut by December, down from 74% before the Iran war began last month.
The private-credit default rate rose to 9.2% in 2025, up from 8.1% in 2024 and the highest ever for a full year.
U.S. bank loans to non-depository financial institutions that include private credit reached $1.2 trillion as of mid-last year. That was nearly triple the share from a decade ago.
Breit’s assets under management went from over $68 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of 2022 to about $54 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Blackstone quarterly reports. Bcred, meanwhile, grew from under $59 billion to almost $90 billion. Combined with other similar private funds for other asset classes, their collective growth far more than offset Breit’s decline in size.
Last year, a record 6% of workers in 401(k) plans took a hardship withdrawal. That is up from 4.8% in 2024 and a prepandemic average of about 2%. The median withdrawal was $1,900.
Chicago took the top spot in a ranking of U.S. cities by financial distress. Chicago saw a 30% increase in residents allowed to skip payments due to financial difficulty, and it also ranked near the top for the number of distressed accounts per capita. Houston, Las Vegas, Dallas and Los Angeles rounded out the top five.
