Trump to host Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for private White House dinner
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Blackstone’s (BX) global head of private equity since 2012 and one of the company’s most senior executives, Joseph Baratta, is set to step down, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
Baratta’s exit is the latest in
HAVEN has just bought its 40th holiday park – and it’s already one of the most popular in the country.
The park found in West Sussex has 2,500 pitches, is right next to its own private beach and you can book a stay from less than £10per night.
The holiday park in question is Seal Bay in West Sussex – it’s award-winning and was recently crowned UK’s most popular £9.50 holiday park.
It has thousands of pitches, there’s plenty of entertainment for the whole family and it’s minutes away from the beach, what’s not to love?
Seal Bay sits on the coast in Selsey and when it comes to picking a place to stay, visitors can choose from seaside caravans to beachfront pods or glamping options.
All stays come with kitted-out kitchens, bed linen, as well as access to the swimming pools and entertainment.
The simplest option is camping, with a choice of grass, electric or serviced pitches – each has a parking space and access to hot shower facilities.
Caravans range from comfy Bronze bases which sleeps up to eight guests, all the way to Platinum caravans that feel more like a homely cottage.
Lodges are larger with their own decks – and some luxury ones even come with a private hot tub.
Beachfront pods are a great choice for those wanting a cosy hideaway facing the sea – they have mezzanines and fold-out double beds, as well as private decking to enjoy that sea breeze.
For those visiting as a large group, you can even book an entire self-catering house.
As for entertainment and play there’s plenty for all ages – some of the highlights are its arcades, bowling, and soft play zones.
There’s also a swimming pool with a splash zone for toddlers, wave simulator, inflatable obstacle course, lazy river and waterslides.
Families with young children can get crafting at the create-your-own teddy bear factory, sand art sessions and try out mini archery which is for those between two and five-years-old.
Older kids should head to the Dockyard which has a large climbing wall and adventure golf.
There’s plenty for adults and couples too, like live music, comedy nights, and Big Red Button Bingo.
When it comes to eating, there’s the Above the Bay Bar & Kitchen which opened earlier this year, along with Smokey’s BBQ Kitchen and the Cafe Lido.
From the park, holidaymakers have direct access down to Seal Bay Beach – and almost one mile of it is reserved for guests only.
Mid-week breaks can be booked for under £250.
A family of up to six can book a four-night stay in May 2027 from £244 in a Classic 2 Bed Holiday Caravan – or £10.16pppn.
If you fancy a break in the next few weeks, a four-night stay in a Classic Caravan from 12-16 October can be booked out from £196 – or £8.16pppn.
Seal Bay will continue to trade under its current name for the remainder of 2026, before changings its name to the Haven brand for 2027.
It’s not the first holiday park that has been taken on by Haven in the last few years – it previously acquired the Richmond Holiday Centre which has now been named Haven Skegness Holiday Park.
Simon Palethorpe, CEO, Haven said: “I’m delighted that we are welcoming Seal Bay to the Haven family. It’s a fantastic park in the most stunning location and will sit brilliantly alongside our 39 other parks.
“Haven’s mission is all about making memories that last a lifetime and we can’t wait to start working with the Seal Bay team to deliver this for thousands of holiday makers and owners in the years to come.”
Holidaymakers can still book holidays on the current Seal Bay resort website – including for breaks in 2027.
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Private Credit By the Numbers: Key Trends Driving Private Lending, Finance Talent, and Global Shipping
Key data points tracking shifts in private credit, finance talent, and global shipping costs.
This article appears in the September 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine.
Each month, Global Finance readers can look forward to our “By the Numbers” feature: A spotlight with key industry metrics that highlight a market in transition. This edition brings you three charts: a break down the numbers driving strategic moves across private lending, corporate talent, and global trade.
Despite a significant drop in deal volume from the previous quarter, driven by higher financing costs, interest-rate uncertainty, and a possible AI-driven market correction, direct lenders are still finding opportunities.
Audax led the field by a wide margin, closing 62 deals in the second quarter — 16 more than second-place TPG Twin Brook (46) and 19 ahead of MidCap Financial (43), according to 9fin data. That gap at the top suggests deal flow is concentrating among a handful of active lenders even as overall volume contracts.
Apollo (37), Churchill (36) and Barings (34) formed a tightly bunched second tier, each within three deals of the next. Apogem (32), Blackstone (30), Monroe (27) and Jefferies Credit Partners (25) rounded out the top 10.
Smaller, middle-market-focused shops like Audax and Twin Brook outpaced Blackstone this quarter despite its scale, making the firm’s eighth-place finish notable. Lenders with flexible mandates—rather than the biggest balance sheets—will likely keep writing checks amid higher financing costs and rate uncertainty.
Gartner reports that traditional talent still overwhelmingly staff today’s finance function, with 85% holding conventional backgrounds and just 15% dedicated to digital skills. That balance will flip within four years.
Gartner projects traditional finance talent will shrink to 20% of the workforce. Dedicated digital finance talent will likely grow to another 20% — and 60% of the workforce will be made up of “nondedicated” digital finance talent, employees who blend finance expertise with data, automation and technology skills rather than fitting neatly into either camp.
The shift means the finance department of 2030 will look less like a roomful of accountants and more like a hybrid team built around technology fluency, with only one in five employees carrying a purely traditional finance profile.
Increased geopolitical risk, fuel costs, insurance premiums, and operating expenses are fueling a steady growth in shipping costs for the foreseeable future.
IF you’re looking for spot for your next holiday that is almost too perfect to be real – we’ve found just the one.
The huge four-bedroom villa has a private heated pool, outdoor hot tub, barbecue and it’s all set right in front of towering Croatian mountains.
Villa Agava is on the Dalmatian coast in Croatia and is so flawless that visitors have said it looks fake.
In one review one visitor wrote “the villa itself does not look real. It’s so immaculate that it looks like Ai has generated it. but it is real.”
Another added: “Lovely stay, thank you for having us. Everything we needed and more. On arrival it was nice to meet you and the villa was spotless.”
Others described it as “exceptional” and “perfect”.
The villa can sleep up to eight people in four bedrooms and has five bathrooms.
Outside is where you’ll find the private, heated swimming pool, a Jacuzzi, deck chairs, and three sun umbrellas.
There’s also an outdoor shower, covered outdoor dining area so you can enjoy meals al fresco – and there’s a barbecue.
There are additional extras which aren’t included in the price, but you can opt for include a culinary experience with an in-villa private chef.
Try out an in-villa massage by a professional masseuse, go on a sailing experience or boat tour in the middle Dalmatian coast.
The best news is that it can be booked £38pppn on Airbnb.
A seven-night stay between April 12-19 between for eight guests is £2,154.
Booking are available from April 2027 until the end of October when it closes for the season.
From early spring, temperatures can sit as high as 20C and in the summer it can be as hot as 30C.
For some exploration further afield, the villa’s closest town is Omiš, and the Omiš Riviera has both sandy and pebble beaches.
The Omiš and Cetina River has high-octane activities like rafting, zip-lining, and water sports on the river.
From there visitors can also head over to the island of Brač which is often considered “Croatia’s best-kept secret”.
It has beautiful beaches including Zlatni Rat Beach which is a favourite amongst locals.
Zlatni Rat Beach has an unusually shaped sandbar and quiet coves scattered around, so it’s a must-visit.
It’s around a 42-minute drive away from Split.
Private credit eyeing piece of JPMorgan’s credit card portfolio: WSJ
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Known as MEHKOs, microenterprise home kitchen operations come in many shapes and sizes. They are coffee shops, barbecue joints, supper clubs, backyard tea parties, pickup-only pizzerias and everything in between. For some of these operators, it’s a passion project, and for others, it’s their only source of income.
MEHKOs were first legalized by state lawmakers in 2019, spurred by advocacy from nonprofit organization the COOK Alliance. Riverside County was the first in the state to adopt the program in 2019. MEHKOs were greenlighted in L.A. County in May 2024, and since then over 400 licenses have been approved. While informal backyard restaurants are nothing new in L.A., the program offers a legal, health-department-approved pathway for many existing home kitchens to thrive.
MEHKOs can only sell up to 30 meals per day and no more than 90 meals per week. They’re also not allowed to advertise with signs on their homes or front lawns. And unlike commercial restaurants, where line cooks will often prep ingredients for the rest of the week, MEHKOs can only serve food that was prepared the same day.
“A home kitchen is not designed or required to have the same commercial infrastructure, such as ventilation systems, grease interceptors, specialized wastewater systems,” said James Dragan, who oversees initiatives including the MEHKO program at the L.A. County Department of Public Health. “The limits are important because of the food safety perspective.”
When dining at a MEHKO, be flexible. It might not be as easy as just placing an order. These home businesses are often open just a few days per week with limited hours, and might only accept orders placed in advance. For example, Palestinian home kitchen Mid East Eats — one of L.A.’s first MEHKOs — currently only offers private dinners and monthly supper clubs. It was previously open for walk-ins with a larger menu, but the format was difficult to sustain and would often create food waste.
“I want to continue doing my private dinners because that’s my favorite thing to do,” said Mid East Eats founder Sumer Durkee. “It’s satisfying to me and feels like home, and people leave feeling so happy.”
MEHKOs can serve as a relatively low-cost stepping stone toward opening a brick-and-mortar and offer one-of-a-kind food experiences, even in a city with as rich a culinary vocabulary as L.A. These eight home kitchens, all of which offer dine-in service, are a great starting place to discover the city’s burgeoning MEHKO scene.
Investors, though, continue to debate the true cost of owning private credit funds.
This article appears in the September 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine.
For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, private credit’s headline management fees are returning to historical norms.
According to data analytics firm Preqin’s latest fund-terms report, direct-lending funds raised in 2025 charged a mean management fee of 1.42% and a median of 1.50%, essentially matching the asset class’s long-term 2005-2025 averages of 1.43% and 1.50%, respectively.
That marks a sharp reversal from the post-pandemic doldrums, when managers cut prices to compete for a shrinking pool of investor capital amid weak fundraising and slow distributions. The median fee on direct lending funds fell to just 1%, and the mean sank to historic lows of 1.25% to 1.32%.
Now, competition for capital appears to be easing at the top of the market, while headline prices tick higher. However, beneath the headline numbers, what investors are paying is a more complicated matter.
“The headline management fee tells you very little about what investors actually pay,” said Ludovic Phalippou, a professor of financial economics at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. “I expect the true all-in cost to be very high.”
Chad Timko, senior investment officer at the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA), one of the largest U.S. public pension funds, valued at $93.9 billion, made a similar point from the practitioner’s perspective: “How a manager pays for performance can be just as important as the performance itself.”
The share of LPAs offering early-investor or large-commitment discounts also fell, from 41% of 2016-2018 vintages to 33% of 2022-2024 vintages. Source: Preqin’s Term Intelligence, data as of March 2025.
The reversal in headline fees isn’t happening evenly. Preqin’s data links it directly to performance. For funds raised between 2015 and 2019, top- and bottom-quartile managers charged nearly identical fees, averaging about 1.42%. For 2020-24 vintages, that changed; top-quartile funds held their fees near 1.42%, while fees in the lower three quartiles fell to between 1.24% and 1.29%.
Behind that split lies a market that has become sharply concentrated among a small number of managers. Two-thirds of all private-credit capital raised in 2024 went to the 20 largest funds, up from less than half in 2020, according to Preqin.
Average fund size has continued to climb for experienced managers, but first-time managers’ fund sizes have remained flat at roughly $120 million for five years. Fee discounts have followed the same pattern; the share of fund agreements offering early-investor or large-commitment discounts fell from 41% for 2016-18 vintages to 33% for the 2022-24 period, and the size of those discounts has also shrunk.
Some investors view the buildup of capital among top managers as a warning sign. Pension money pouring into private credit in recent years has “got out of hand,” loosening underwriting standards across the industry, said Mark Steed, CIO of the $25.8 billion Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System. “There’s going to be a shakeout.”
Investor sentiment has grown more cautious even as realized results tick up. In Preqin’s most recent survey, 35% of institutional investors called private credit assets overvalued, up 16 percentage points year-over-year, and 37% expect performance to soften over the next 12 months, chiefly citing the path of interest rates.
Similarly, PwC’s 2026 global private credit survey identified ongoing fee competition among managers as a top concern heading into this year.
Capital concentration isn’t unique to developed private credit markets, either, though it takes a different shape elsewhere. India’s private credit market grew 35% year over year in 2025, to roughly $12.4 billion.
“Domestic funds represented over 64% of total deal value, pointing to the increasing depth of local capital,” noted Syed Hasan Jafar, vice dean of the School of Business and head of the Department of Finance at Woxsen University.
Despite the recorded uptick in fees, it remains unclear whether investor expenses are moving along with the trend.
Preqin’s figures track the headline contractual management fee rate written into a fund’s limited partnership agreement (LPA) at formation: not fund expenses, fee offsets, transaction and monitoring charges, or, in newer semi-liquid vehicles, fees calculated on NAV rather than committed capital.
“We still do not have a reliable measure of total expense ratios in private credit,” said Oxford’s Phalippou. The problem is structural, he said. “Private credit has essentially inherited the same fee model as private equity, so the transparency problems are very similar. In semi-liquid products, the situation can actually be worse because some fees are calculated based on NAV. That creates additional opportunities for gaming.”
Despite the increase in headline fees, alternative investment adviser and fund manager Cliffwater’s 2025 survey of direct lending funds found total blended costs — management fees plus incentive fees and expenses — roughly flat or lower, not higher. Proskauer’s most recent private credit survey shows that commitment and arrangement fees — a separate one-time charge — continue to fall.
Neither Cliffwater’s nor Proskauer’s findings contradict Preqin’s data; they measure different metrics. Together, they suggest that while the sticker price at the top of the market is rising, what investors pay all-in remains unclear.
Resistance to trading private assets more openly “generally means your fee is above where it’s supposed to be, and you don’t want to shine a light on it,” said Apollo Global Management chairman and CEO Marc Rowan.
Phalippou is skeptical, in any case, that investors have much power to push back, regardless of which way headline fees move.
“The uncomfortable truth is that most LPs have very little negotiating leverage,” he said. “For the vast majority of investors, these are effectively take-it-or-leave-it contracts.” The result, he adds, is that fees persist “not because they have been negotiated, but because the market structure allows them to persist.”
LACERA addresses the problem by measuring “investor profit retention,” the share of investment gains it retains after all fees, rather than fixating on the headline management fee rate, Timko said. Because its capital bears the full risk of loss, LACERA expects “to retain a super-majority of the gains generated,” with manager compensation weighted toward a performance fee that pays out only above a hard hurdle rate of cash plus a spread, rather than a flat charge on committed capital.
It is, in effect, a bet that the real fight over cost in private credit is not about the sticker price but about how gains are split once they materialize.
Thomas Monteiro is a contributing writer based in Spain.
JODIE Marsh has leaked an intimate email allegedly from her ex-boyfriend praising their ‘crazy’ sex life following their split.
The former glamour girl, 47, recently announced her heartache at splitting from property developer Lukas Sheen just weeks after going public with the romance.
This morning, she shared the lengthy email on social media platform X in which Lukas revealed the moment he fell in love with her.
He also shared his regret at a fallout the pair had during which they stopped speaking, before musing that it might have led to the relationship they went on to have.
There is a sweet reference to Jodie’s snoring and a declaration they would be together forever.
He went on to describe how they were well-matched in the bedroom and enjoyed a passionate love life.
Days ago, Jodie, who now runs the animal sanctuary Fripps Farm, said she ended the relationship when a mystery woman allegedly repeatedly called Lukas’ phone.
She said he had been unable to give her an explanation and it had left her embarrassed and “mugged off”.
Addressing the split, she said: “I loved him with all my heart. I’d never felt a love so deep. I’d have taken a bullet for him.
“There have been many red flags recently between us and I kept choosing to ignore them. Last night I reached the end of my tolerance.”
She added: “I don’t care what happened or is happening between them. I feel like I need peace of mind for my own sanity. I know that’s probably mad but my brain can’t cope with the lies.”
Home Private Credit Fed Rate Hike Squeezes an Already Stressed Private Credit Sector
Fed rate hikes threaten to further strain direct lenders as private credit default rates hit record highs.
The private credit industry keeps insisting it’s fine. The data keeps suggesting otherwise, and Wednesday’s interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve isn’t going to help the argument.
The Federal Open Market Committee officially raised the federal funds target range by 25 basis points to 3.75%-4.00%. The decision, which was unanimous among the 12 board members, marks the first rate hike since 2023.
“Whenever the Fed increases rates, the pressure on the liability side becomes very high,” David Yahalomi, chief operating officer and co-founder of Tel Aviv-based loan-management platform Hypercore, said in an email.
Companies that borrow through direct lending typically carry floating-rate debt, meaning their interest costs rise automatically whenever the U.S. central bank moves rates. The hike officially pushes up borrowing expenses at a moment when defaults are already climbing to levels not seen before.
“In the event of a prime rate increase, this structure shrinks [private credit portfolio company] margins,” Yahalomi added. And the squeeze is already showing up in the numbers.
A Fitch Ratings report from Monday shows that the U.S. Private Credit Default Rate, or PCDR, hit 6.3% for the 12 months ended in August. That’s up from 6.1% in July. The rate has now held at or above 6.0% since April. Here’s the credit rating agency’s breakdown of the findings:
While the overall PCDR blends middle-market CLO ratings (MCO) and insurer-monitored private ratings (PMR), August’s rise was driven by record stress in MCOs (5.6%), even as PMR rates eased slightly to an elevated 8.5%.
Harvey Tian, head of loan operations at Suntera Fund Services, said a size-weighted view changes how PIK interest should be read as well.
“Once the prime rate goes up, the terms on all the rates will increase, and it will definitely put pressure on the borrower side — the ones paying cash interest,” Tian told Global Finance on a call.
Loans structured with PIK options, however, aren’t paying cash interest at all, he noted. That insulates that particular pool of borrowers from a higher interest rate.
“I don’t see a huge effect on the underlying portfolio of PIK borrowers if it’s a one-time hike,” Tian said of Wednesday’s Fed announcement. A quarter-point increase would phase into the PIK rate structure over time rather than land all at once.
Multiple hikes are a different story, given the inflationary pressures caused by a worsening U.S.-Iran conflict.
Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private credit. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com.
