The 'Blame Game' In Private Credit Begins

The 'Blame Game' In Private Credit Begins

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

This morning I warned (again) this wasn’t a normal market in private credit. It was a liquidity event. And today it’s becoming something else too.

According to the Financial Times, the SEC is now questioning whether Egan-Jones, a small but deeply embedded credit rating agency in private credit, can “consistently produce credit ratings with integrity.” That’s not a routine inquiry. That’s the regulator openly wondering whether one of the key cogs in the machine was ever doing its job properly in the first place. Think S&P during The Big Short…

And the timing is almost too perfect.

Because just as gates go up, withdrawals get capped, and investors start asking for their money back, the conversation is shifting from “everything is fine” to “who signed off on this?”

That shift matters just as much as the redemptions.

For years, private credit sold stability. It worked because nobody had to test it. As long as money kept coming in and nobody needed to get out all at once, the system held together. You know, kinda like Madoff.

Now people are trying to get out, and suddenly the inputs behind those reassuring return streams — the marks, the models, the ratings — don’t look quite as solid. So naturally, we arrive at the part of the cycle where everyone starts looking around the room for someone else to blame.

Egan-Jones is an easy place to start. For years, it has faced recurring regulatory scrutiny, primarily from the U.S. SEC, over conflicts of interest, disclosure practices, and internal controls tied to its business model. The most significant action came in 2012, when the SEC charged the firm with misrepresenting its expertise in rating asset-backed securities, resulting in fines and a temporary suspension from rating certain structured products. Ongoing concerns have centered on compliance systems, documentation, and transparency, highlighting tensions between its independent approach and NRSRO regulatory standards.

A small shop with a big footprint, issuing thousands of ratings on private loans that insurers rely on for capital treatment. If those ratings are even slightly generous, or just structurally flawed, then the implications stretch far beyond one firm. It raises the uncomfortable possibility that risk across the system wasn’t just misunderstood, but conveniently packaged to look safer than it was. Again, the analogues to the housing crisis are easy to identify.

And this idea takes hold, it doesn’t stay contained. Managers distance themselves. Investors get louder. Regulators, even reluctant ones, start asking questions they would have preferred not to ask.

Which makes this even more interesting, because this SEC has hardly been spoiling for a fight. In fact, just yesterday news broke that the acting head of enforcement, effectively the agency’s top cop, is stepping down after reportedly pushing for more aggressive action than leadership wanted.

So if this group is starting to publicly question the integrity of ratings in private credit, it’s probably not because they woke up feeling ambitious. It’s because the pressure is getting hard to ignore.

That’s how these things usually go. Not with a bang, but with a slow, reluctant acknowledgment that something underneath the surface isn’t right. Kicking the can down the road continues literally as long as it’s humanly possible.

And now private credit is still a liquidity event, but it’s evolving into a credibility event at the same time. As the blame starts getting handed out, don’t be surprised if a few more “previously respected” pillars of the private credit boom suddenly look a lot less sturdy. The blame game is just getting started and there could be plenty more of it to go around in coming weeks.

Tracking the private credit meltdown:

March 24, 2026 - SEC questions Egan-Jones' ratings in private credit
March 24, 2026 - Ares restricts withdrawals on its Strategic Income Fund after redemption requests hit 11.6%
March 23, 2026 - Apollo caps withdrawals on its $25 billion Apollo Debt Solutions vehicle after redemptions hit 11%
March 19, 2026 - Stone Ridge’s Alternative Lending Risk Premium Fund gates redemptions after overwhelming redemption requests
March 16, 2026 - Apollo co-president says that “all” marks in parts of the private markets industry are “wrong”
March 11, 2026 - Morgan Stanley and Cliffwater cap redemptions in $8 billion, and $33 billion funds, respectively
March 6, 2026 - BlackRock begins limiting withdrawals from its $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund
March 3, 2026 - Blackstone faces “record” redemptions from its flagship private credit vehicle, investors sought to redeem 7.9% of fund’s $82B in assets
February 19, 2026 - Blue Owl restricts redemptions from its retail private credit fund
January 26, 2026 - Blackrock takes 19% markdowns on TCP Capital Corp.
December 17, 2025 - Blue Owl walks away from $10 billion data center deal for Oracle
October 15, 2025 - QTR warns private credit is one of 10 areas of the market that I would avoid heading into 2026

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Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/26/2026 - 07:20