Private debt firms financed 77% of global buyouts in 2024, their highest share in a decade, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence’s February 2025 reading of Preqin data. Bank lending, long the default engine of leveraged deals, had been pushed to the margins.
For JP Conte, managing partner of Lupine Crest Capital, that shift changes the cost of capital, the speed of execution, and the type of seller a buyer meets across the table.
How the Financing Stack Flipped
Direct lenders moved into space that banks vacated during the regional-bank stress that followed 2022. Unitranche facilities and second-lien structures closed faster than syndicated bank debt could, and sponsor-backed deals gravitated toward the private channel by default.
Banks have since returned, pulled back by the Federal Reserve’s rate cuts and a reopening syndicated market. Competition between bank and direct-lender financing now sits closer to even than at any point since 2023, though private credit assets keep growing regardless of where rates settle.
Why a Balance-Sheet Buyer Adapts Faster
Speed tends to matter more than the sticker rate. Sponsors will routinely pay 50 to 100 basis points extra for direct-lender money that closes in 45 days over a bank deal that drags to 90, a premium that rewards certainty.
Lupine Crest invests its own capital across private equity, real estate, and venture, which frees JP Conte from the debt-to-EBITDA targets fund-stage sponsors chase to clear a hurdle rate. Conservative capital structures that a debt-heavy rival would lose on price become workable when no outside committee sets the terms.
The 2026 Read
A market where most buyouts run on private debt is also one where a conservatively financed family office can hold for value creation rather than for an exit window. Pricing pressure from direct-lender competition squeezes the equity returns available to fund-stage sponsors, and that squeeze does not bite the same way on a balance sheet underwriting without a fund-level return target.
Family offices now expect to do more direct deals, with 64% planning six or more in the coming year, per the Family Wealth Report’s November 2025 summit citing BNY data. Some assets route to buyers like Conte’s Lupine Crest precisely because the patient case closes more reliably than the sponsor reload.