JPMorgan Chase

Liquidity relief today, balance-sheet strain tomorrow: The very structures that make private credit nimble—PIK loans—could also mask risk until it’s too late.

When GoHealth Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 7, the writing had been on the wall for two years. The Chicago-based health insurance marketplace had inked a payment-in-kind (PIK) deal to preserve liquidity only to collapse under the weight of more than $1 billion in debt.

For GoHealth’s lenders, including Blue Owl Capital, one of the largest private credit managers, it was a familiar scenario — allow a portfolio company to defer cash interest payments and roll them into its debt balance. This preserves liquidity during uncertain times. For GoHealth, the PIK agreement preceded a critical Medicare enrollment cycle.

Ultimately, it only bought time.

Liquidity deteriorated, Medicare Advantage pressures persisted, and GoHealth—once valued at $6.6 billion—ran out of runway. By late last year, lenders had placed the company’s loans on nonaccrual status. By the time GoHealth filed for bankruptcy protection, the PIK arrangement had become just another case study in a growing private-credit risk: debt structures that postpone distress while quietly deepening it.

“PIK is like a double-edged sword,” said Lakshmi Ganapathi, founder of Unicus Research in Ridgefield, Connecticut. “Borrowers seem to love PIK toggles in good times because it preserves the cash, but under stress, the accruing principal at a compounding rate becomes a balance-sheet problem. It’s attractive until it’s not.”

GoHealth and Blue Owl did not respond to requests for comment.

Borrower, Beware

GoHealth is hardly alone. P3 Health Partners restructured its term loan last year into a cash-and-PIK arrangement, requiring borrowers to pay a portion of interest in cash while adding the remainder to principal. This preserved liquidity but increased leverage over time. The Henderson, Nevada-based healthcare provider now has $380 million in long-term debt at double-digit interest rates.

In some cases, the outcome is more dramatic. Software company Pluralsight, owned by Vista Equity Partners, was ultimately handed over to a consortium of private credit lenders, including Blue Owl, Ares, Golub, Oaktree, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock. Efforts to manage Pluralsight’s debt burden proved insufficient, and Vista wrote off roughly $4 billion in equity.

“There’s a through-line across all of them,” Ganapathi told Global Finance. “A borrower under cash-flow strain defers an obligation, whether through PIK, an amendment, or a liability-management exercise.”

The deferral increases the debt burden or postpones the reckoning, and the resolution is a lender-led restructuring in which the equity is wiped out or impaired and the debt holders take control.

“The 2026 cluster is concentrated in healthcare and software, where higher-for-longer rates met business models underwritten on cheaper money,” she added.

In a post-bank-crisis world of high interest rates and tightened underwriting standards, private credit has stepped into the void. But the very perks that make it nimble — like PIK loans — can be foreshadowing: a bankruptcy filing that simply formalizes what the PIK plan already implied.

Firms like Blue Owl Capital have exposure across a range of heavily leveraged software, technology, and financial borrowers, some of which have recently faced bankruptcies, insolvencies, or out-of-court restructurings. It’s enough to turn certain dealmakers off completely.

“Our firm doesn’t do any pay-in-kind,” Scott Stevens, CEO of Grays Peak Capital, a New York-based global investment firm, said. “We only do cash pay, and that is, I think, why we’ve had no defaults.”

One need only look to the September bankruptcy of auto parts supplier First Brands Group. The filing came after a PIK-based option had been introduced — highlighting how quickly deferred-interest arrangements can become embedded in stressed credits. Fortified by the “cockroach” imagery used by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, headlines about the collapse of private credit began circulating.

But the evidence isn’t just anecdotal.

Poorly PIK-ed

An analysis by Lincoln International found that 11% of loans in its private credit database carried some form of PIK interest in 2025, up from 7% in 2021. While the increase appears gradual, the composition of these loans is what’s striking: 58% are now classified as “bad PIK.”

That means the borrowers couldn’t keep up with payments and later had to switch to PIK. The shift matters because it reflects weakening credit quality rather than a pre-planned financing option.

In other words, the loans migrated into PIK status as borrowers faced deteriorating cash flows and required relief. The share of “bad PIK” loans has more than doubled since late 2021, Lincoln notes, effectively turning the metric into a proxy for underlying problems.

The implications are significant. In many cases, borrowers use PIK not because business conditions are improving or because growth is being reinvested, but because cash generation is insufficient to service debt. Lincoln describes this as a potential “shadow default rate,” capturing companies that might otherwise have defaulted absent lender forbearance.

The deterioration in the balance sheet is equally stark. Within the bad PIK group, average loan-to-value ratios have risen from 39.4% at origination to 76.1% today, underscoring how quickly leverage can escalate when earnings weaken and enterprise values compress.

Private credit proponents highlight flexibility and speed as advantages that outweigh the drawbacks. Unlike traditional banks, direct lenders can close deals in weeks, tailor covenants, and even hold entire loan books. Borrowers pay a premium for certainty and confidentiality: a trade-off that often, though not always, takes the form of a PIK arrangement. But Grays Peak Capital’s Stevens sees 2026 as an inflection point.

“A lot of people tightened their lending standards over the last three to six months,” he says. Stevens attributes the stress to a combination of rate resets and companies failing to grow in line with underwriting assumptions. Some defaults are to be expected, especially those that are tech and venture related. “But I don’t think it’s systemic in terms of the economy.”

A Bank-Like Game, Sans the Rules

Not everyone is so optimistic. After all, the sector’s flexibility comes with a cost: opacity. Critics point to the tangled web of interconnections between private lenders and banks as a source of potential systemic risk.

The very features that make private credit attractive — speed, flexibility, confidentiality — also make it difficult to monitor. And as PIK loans accumulate on balance sheets with limited public disclosure, a broader question is taking shape. If private credit is playing a bank-like game, should it play by the same rules?

Regulating private credit providers like banks would be too stifling, Stevens argues. “If they would go too far down the regulatory path, I think this will skirt innovation and growth,” he said, pointing to defense sector financing as an area where private credit needs room to maneuver.

Todd Holleman, a partner at King & Spalding, draws a distinction between the two. Bank regulations exist for a reason, he argued. Deposits are primarily individuals’ money, and the global financial crisis showed how quickly bad investments could put that money at risk. Private credit is different. Its capital comes primarily from sovereign wealth funds, pension plans and insurance companies — sophisticated investors who are already regulated and understand what they’re buying. Applying bank regulations to private credit, Holleman said, would be an apples-to-oranges comparison. “They just wouldn’t work.”

Ganapathi sees it differently, citing the case of Market Financial Solutions (MFS). The UK bridge lender collapsed into administration in February following allegations of fraud and asset double-pledging. HSBC wasn’t directly exposed to MFS — it was exposed to Apollo, which was. The $400 million loss traveled up the chain.

“It cascades,” Ganapathi said, drawing a parallel to Japan’s lost decade, when banks extended credit to insolvent borrowers while avoiding mark-to-market accounting — papering over losses until the system buckled. “They were extending and pretending like nothing happened, not marking to market. That derailed the system. Regulations stopped it. Now, if you take regulation out of the picture, what will stop this? Without a trigger, this could continue for a long time.”

Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private credit. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com.

Value up, volume down — megadeals carry record-chasing M&A market through a year of geopolitical turmoil.

Global mergers and acquisitions are on track to reach roughly $4 trillion in total value in 2026. That’s up 13% from 2025 — only the second-highest spike to the pandemic-era peak of 2021 — that figure obscures a market increasingly defined by a handful of blockbuster transactions.

Deal volume data from PwC and LSEG projects an estimated 42,000 transactions for the full year, down 13% from 2025. Megadeals exceeding $5 billion account for roughly 48% of global deal value — up from 39% in 2025 and just 26% in 2024. Remove them from the equation, and overall deal value falls 4% year over year.

Headwinds likely stymied deal activity in specific sectors. The U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, launched in late February, caused what the International Energy Agency called the largest oil supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, sending energy prices sharply higher.

Despite the recent U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the conflict cast a pall over deal activity for much of the first half of the year, particularly for transactions with any exposure to energy, logistics, or the Gulf region.

Geographic Picture Remains Uneven

The U.S. has expanded its dominance, commanding 63% of global deal value in the first half of 2026, up from 54% a year earlier, even as deal volumes fell, according to Dealogic.

Europe’s share of value also increased by 88% ($733.6 billion), buoyed by large individual transactions. The Middle East and Africa, together, saw a 45% increase in deal value ($61.3 billion).

Asia Pacific moved in the opposite direction: its share of global deal value dropped to 29% — reflecting fewer megadeals and smaller average transaction sizes relative to the U.S. and EMEA.

On the advisory side, Goldman Sachs is leading the rankings by a wide margin — $1.161 trillion in deal value across more than 200 transactions so far this year. Among the firm’s marquee assignments: advising Dominion Energy on its $66.8 billion sale to NextEra Energy, counseling Unilever on its planned $65 billion food business merger with McCormick & Company, and serving as lead-left underwriter on the SpaceX IPO.

JPMorgan ranks second with $743 billion, up from $557.1 billion a year earlier — a performance the bank has attributed in part to M&A fees that nearly doubled year over year in the first quarter of 2026. Morgan Stanley rounds out the top three at $622.5 billion.

Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private credit. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com

A veteran dealmaker takes the helm as large-cap M&A shows signs of a selective recovery.

JPMorgan Chase, the global leader in investment banking revenue, has named Anu Aiyengar global chair of Investment Banking and M&A, signaling a renewed emphasis on dealmaking as a pillar of its investment banking strategy.

As part of a broader divisional shift, the bank also named Dorothee Blessing, Kevin Foley, and Jared Kaye as co-heads of Global Investment Banking, while Charles Bouckaert succeeds Aiyengar as global head of M&A.

The changes come as deal activity shows signs of recovery after nearly two years of sluggish momentum. Dealogic estimates that global deal announcements reached nearly $2 trillion by May 11. That’s a 33% increase from the same period last year.

Still, observers note that the current cycle is far from a repeat of the free-flowing deal market of 2021. Higher financing costs have made boards more disciplined about price and timing, while closer regulatory scrutiny from antitrust watchdogs in both the U.S. and Europe has raised the financial and reputational cost of getting large transactions wrong.

A Selective, Large-Cap Rally

“This has not been a full-spectrum, feel-good rally. It has been a highly selective one, skewed toward strategic, large-cap deals,” said Marc Cooper, CEO of Solomon Partners. “Deals valued at $5 billion and up accounted for more than half of all volumes. That distinction matters.”

Against this backdrop, Aiyengar’s appointment suggests JPMorgan sees senior dealmaking expertise as a defining advantage in the current market. The firm expects the dealmaking veteran to work closely with senior clients as boards decide whether to move forward with transactions or wait for better conditions.

Since joining JPMorgan in 1999, Aiyengar has advised on more than $1 trillion in transactions. She became sole head of the bank’s global M&A franchise in 2023, making her the only woman leading M&A at a major Wall Street house at the time.

Her move also carries symbolic weight in an industry where senior dealmaking roles remain dominated by men. In 2025, Business Insider named her the top U.S. M&A banker on its Rainmakers list, making her the first woman to hold the No. 1 position.

This article appears in the June 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine.

An acquisition is the easiest way for the titan to get a leg up with digital nomads and international customers.

At first glance, it seems an absurd idea: JPMorgan Chase & Co., with its roughly $850 billion market cap, acquiring European unicorn Revolut, a private neobank valued at $75 billion.

Seemingly absurd, yes, but also worth considering, because it underscores the challenge that upstart fintechs pose to traditional banks. JPMorgan has already tested the practicality of building a digital-first banking experience internally. It launched Finn in 2017 as a standalone mobile banking brand aimed at younger users, then shut it down in 2019 after it failed to gain traction.

But the Finn experiment was not a clean rebuttal; it looked more like a legacy institution’s attempt to market around a shifting banking relationship than a fundamental rethink. A Revolut acquisition would give JPMorgan an established entry point into a dynamic new field.

I’m old enough to remember when BlackBerry’s CEO scoffed at Steve Jobs, saying, “You don’t need an app for the web.” We know how that played out. It’s easy to dismiss what doesn’t seem to fit your current moment, and just as easy to miss the next shift when you have the means to act.

JPMorgan doesn’t need Revolut. But the point isn’t survival; it’s trajectory. If banking is moving toward super apps as primary accounts, the question is whether JPMorgan can realistically build that future internally, or whether buying it may be the faster path.

Here are four reasons it could actually make sense:

1. The Technology

Ask a senior engineer at Revolut whether JPMorgan could replicate its platform quickly, and you’re likely to get a laugh. Ask JPMorgan’s technology leadership, and you’re likely to hear the opposite.

Both can be true.

By the time JPMorgan was experimenting with the future, Revolut was writing it. The fintech hit 100,000 customers within a year of its funding and scaled to 50 million by the end of 2024. It’s redefining what consumers expect from banking in Europe, and its sights are now set on the U.S. as well. In March, it applied to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for a U.S. national bank charter.

2. The Culture

JPMorgan has the resources to succeed in the era of super-apps. But building a globally integrated, mobile-first platform is as much about organizational culture as it is about technology. Revolut was built for speed, iteration, and cross-border functionality from day one. JPMorgan was built for scale, stability, and regulatory complexity.

As Finn illustrates, those traits are not easily interchangeable.

JPMorgan could buy smaller firms in payments, investing, foreign exchange, or onboarding to assemble its own version of a super app. But stitching together components is not the same as acquiring a scaled, integrated platform with tens of millions of users, unified technology, and talent that lives and breathes a culture built around speed and innovation.

Realistically, an acquisition would require a significant premium over Revolut’s most recent private valuation. But that cuts both ways; JPMorgan would be paying for a scaled operating system, not a collection of disconnected parts.

3. The Geography

The difference between the two banks shows up in their approach to competing in Europe. JPMorgan is already expanding its digital retail presence and building out its footprint beyond the U.S. But the approach is incremental.

Revolut is anything but incremental. The company has grown to more than 70 million customers, adding roughly 1 million every 17 days. It provides immediate scale in markets where JPMorgan is still building.

Banks like Banco Santander have spent decades building global retail networks, market by market. For JPMorgan, acquiring Revolut would dramatically shorten that timeline, turning a multi-year expansion into near-instant relevance.

4. The Demographics

Traditional banking still assumes a static customer: one address, one jurisdiction, one primary market. While that remains true for many customers, it doesn’t justify treating digital nomads and international customers as undeserving, which is exactly what many U.S. banks do.

A growing segment — freelancers, remote workers, and globally mobile professionals — lives across borders. They earn in one currency, spend in another, and expect their financial lives to follow them. Revolut was built specifically for this customer.

JPMorgan, for all its scale, still largely adheres to a domestic model. Acquiring Revolut would instantly position it at the center of a shift already underway: one that legacy banking structures are not designed to support.

Regulatory Hurdles

Of course, a deal this large would face serious scrutiny in the U.S. and the U.K. Regulators would question systemic risk, governance, the impact on competition, and whether one of the world’s largest banks should absorb one of fintech’s fastest-growing global challengers.

But “difficult” and “impossible” are not synonyms, especially in modern finance, where every few years brings a deal that once seemed unthinkable. If JPMorgan believed the strategic gap was large enough, regulatory friction would become part of the negotiation, not the automatic death of the deal.  

It would also send a signal to regulators and policymakers — intentionally or not — that U.S. banking structures may need to loosen if domestic institutions are to compete more effectively on the global stage. Even floating a deal like a JPMorgan/Revolut tie-up would force a conversation the industry needs to have.

No, JPMorgan doesn’t need Revolut. But at some point, it may have to decide whether to write the future of banking or keep refining the version it already dominates.