PennantPark Founder and Managing Partner Art Penn attended the Private Debt Investor Seoul and Tokyo Forums last week and participated in multiple panels that evaluated how investors can find value in private credit and assessed the global factors impacting the private debt market.
In both Tokyo and Seoul, Art provided an overview of the robust opportunities and strategies institutional investors can capitalize on to preserve capital and maximize performance throughout the current credit cycle and highlighted the value and reliability of an experienced manager regardless of market conditions.
Art participated in the Tokyo panel alongside Robert Radway of NXT Capital, Randy Schwimmer of Churchill Asset Management and Andrew Hedlund, Americas Editor at Private Debt Investor. The discussion began with a focus on the role of private debt in the wider portfolio, as participants weighed in on how the expansion of private debt has led to institutional investors expanding into the asset class and evaluated the future opportunities investors have to join the asset class if they haven’t done so already.
Other discussion topics included the private debt market’s ability to withstand market conditions, direct lending’s place in the overall economy, questions investors should be asking managers, target returns on a collection of loan structures, disruptions in the market, as well as market segments and the opportunities in each. Specifically, Art provided insight into the historical development and advantages of BDCs, with an emphasis placed on how international investors can take advantage of them.
Later in the week, Art was joined on the panel in Seoul by Deborah Ogawa of Fitch Ratings, Mark Brenke of Ardian, Lee Landrum of BlackRock and Adrian Redlich of Merricks Capital. Art and the participants discussed direct lending, the growth of private debt, the state of the current cycle and the global factors and regulatory issues impacting the direct lending market. The panelists also discussed manager’s direct lending opportunities and selection rationale,
It was a pleasure to attend and sponsor PDI Tokyo and PDI Seoul and we enjoyed discussing the global and institutional issues in the private debt and direct lending markets that directly impact investors.