Matt Levine, Columnist

KKR Buys Back Some Private Credit

Also Virginia referendum resolutions and OpenAI tenders.

May 11, 2026 at 6:24 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

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The situation with business development companies is that their market value is less than their net asset value. A BDC is basically a retail private credit fund; it has a portfolio of loans, it marks them to market every quarter, and it computes a net asset value per share. “Our portfolio is worth $20 per share” or whatever, it tells investors. And then:

Meanwhile the private credit firms that run the BDCs emphasize that everything is fine: Their loans are good, the net asset values correctly reflect the values of the funds, and this is all irrational panic. But what can they do about it? There are two conflicting impulses: