A version of this article appeared in CNBC’s Inside Alts newsletter, a guide to the fast-growing world of alternative investments, from private equity and private credit to hedge funds and venture capital. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.The problems in private credit are “multiplying by the quarter,” due in part to the “financial alchemy of promising liquidity that isn’t there,” Boaz Weinstein, founder of Saba Capital Management, told Inside Alts this week. “What’s happening, big picture, right now is that, for a number of reasons, in the middle of a bull market, there are cracks, there are problems, there are frauds, there are companies that are going bad without being a fraud,” Weinstein said in an exclusive interview. “So for those reasons, investors are seeing their dividends being cut. They want their money back, and [on] Wall Street the No. 1 story right now is where the redemption is going to be for all these managers.” Weinstein, of course, is a central figure in that story. His firm, Saba, alongside Cox Capital Management, just launched a tender offer to purchase 6.9% of shares in one of Blue Owl’s nontraded private credit funds at a 34.9% discount. “We were hearing from investors in these funds that they wanted their money back,” he said. “They were trying to find someone to step into their shoes, so that happened in an organic way.” That fund, known as Blue Owl Capital Corp. II, halted quarterly redemptions and sold $1.4 billion of direct lending investments to provide liquidity for its investors. It turned out to be among the first in a slew of nontraded, private credit funds that have been hit with redemption requests above the typical 5% quarterly cap.Private wealth flows across products tracked by analysts at Jefferies were down 19% in the first quarter compared with Q4. Analysts said they expect redemption rates across retail credit products to increase. Saba and Cox see an opportunity amid investors’ limited liquidity. They are launching similar …
