Octus recently spoke with ORIX USA Group Head of Direct Lending Nik Singhal about the private credit deployment landscape in 2025. He covers the increasing M&A activity that ORIX USA’s NXT Capital saw at the end of 2024, and the macro factors contributing to a further thawing of the overall dealmaking environment.
Highlights from Nik:
- “2025 is shaping up to be one of the better years for private credit deployment,” according to Nik Singhal.
- “The backdrop for deployment is getting more favorable in our opinion, with interest rates coming down and inflation appearing to have stabilized at 2.5%,” Singhal said.
- “In the second half of 2024, there were good signs of dealmaking coming back after a slow start to the year,” Singhal noted. For NXT, the third and fourth quarters of 2024 were “very strong, not just relative to the last two years, but since their inception,” he said. “While add-on investment opportunities contributed to this, the vast majority of deployments were in new portfolio companies, largely driven by increasing M&A activity.”