$1.47 billion in announced private credit and asset-based finance transactions across nine deals and six sectors. One eight-bank club took two thirds of the volume. Almost everything else went to lenders funding other lenders.
Last week produced an unusually clean picture of how capital is being allocated across the credit market right now.
At the top, a syndicate of eight banks refinanced a scaled technology borrower with a revolver-heavy, five-year facility at tighter spreads. That is the syndicated bank market competing directly with private credit for the borrowers it wants, and winning.
Below it, $392 million moved into lender finance across three separate transactions, from a money-centre bank, a regional bank and an alternative asset manager. Different balance sheets, same product. Each dollar lent to a specialty lender or lessor supports a multiple of downstream origination in the real economy.
And underneath that, five facilities ranging from $55 million to $1.8 million kept the working capital machinery of building supplies, government logistics, real estate and energy services running.
Here is what happened, and what it means for the people who have to underwrite, fund and monitor this paper.
Zeta Global: $1.0 billion, eight banks, three quarters undrawn
Zeta Global closed a new $1 billion credit facility to refinance an existing $550 million facility and lower its credit spreads, combining a $250 million Term Loan A with a $750 million revolving credit facility that remained undrawn at the time of closing. The five-year senior secured facility was arranged by a consortium led by Bank of America, replacing an August 2024 credit agreement and immediately repaying $200 million of obligations under the prior facility, with interest tied to SOFR or a base rate and margins linked to the company’s consolidated net leverage ratio, subject to a leverage cap that can temporarily increase following sizeable acquisitions. BofA Securities acted as lead arranger and bookrunner, with Citi, JPMorgan, RBC Capital Markets and Truist Securities as joint lead arrangers and bookrunners. Flagstar Bank and Morgan Stanley took co-documentation agent roles, with MUFG participating.
Why it matters:
The structure is the story. This is a Term Loan A, not a Term Loan B, which means bank-held, amortising, covenanted paper rather than institutional term loan paper distributed to CLOs and credit funds. Three quarters of the commitment is a revolver that was undrawn at close, so the banks are being paid commitment fees to hold capacity rather than deploy it. That is a liquidity instrument, not a leveraged capital structure.
For anyone tracking the boundary between syndicated bank lending and private credit, this is a data point on the bank side of the line. A large, cash-generative borrower with roughly $1.3 billion of 2025 revenue went to a club of eight relationship banks and came away with a bigger facility at a lower spread. Direct lenders were not part of that conversation.
Key risks:
There is no hard collateral here in any asset-based sense. The credit is enterprise value, recurring revenue and covenant compliance, so recovery in a stress case depends on going-concern value rather than liquidation value. The margin grid is tied to consolidated net leverage, which means pricing worsens exactly when performance does. The leverage cap can step up temporarily after sizeable acquisitions, which is standard but does allow reported leverage to run higher through an integration period. And $750 million of undrawn capacity earmarked for acquisitions and share buybacks is optionality that can be used to lever up as easily as to build resilience.
Opportunities:
For the arranging banks, the real return on a revolver-led club is ancillary: treasury management, foreign exchange, payments and future capital markets mandates. That is why banks will price a revolver aggressively and still make the relationship work. For asset managers, the read-across matters more than the deal. If banks are willing to reclaim borrowers of this size on these terms, spread compression is coming for the upper end of direct lending, and the differentiated return sits further down in size or further into asset-based structures.
Aperture Investors and Avant: $300 million, and an asset manager writing the warehouse
Aperture Investors, an alternative asset manager and part of Generali Investments, led a $300 million asset-based financing facility with Avant, a financial technology company, providing flexible capital to support Avant’s continued growth across its platform and building on a longstanding relationship between Aperture’s Asset-Based Finance team and Avant. Aperture’s ABF strategy launched in 2025 and is led by Global Head of Asset-Based Finance and Portfolio Manager Nick Turgeon. The facility will primarily support the expansion of Avant’s credit card business. Avant, founded in 2012, runs a data-driven, multi-product platform giving middle-income US consumers access to credit cards and personal loans, and has reached over 4.5 million unique customers, supplying more than $13.7 billion in personal loans and upwards of 3.1 million credit cards.
Why it matters:
This was the largest pure asset-based transaction of the week, and the capital did not come from a bank. An alternative asset manager underwrote and led a facility secured by consumer receivables, for a platform that both originates and services them. Five years ago this was a bank warehouse or an ABS take-out. Now it is a fund product.
That migration is the single most important structural shift in credit at the moment, and this deal shows what it requires. Aperture launched the strategy in 2025 and is already writing $300 million tickets against granular consumer collateral. Doing that credibly means having asset-level surveillance capability that looks a lot like a bank’s, on a manager’s timeline.
Key risks:
Consumer credit performance is the obvious one, particularly on credit card receivables where balances revolve and losses emerge later than in an instalment book. Advance rates have to be set against cumulative net loss curves that may not be stable through a softening labour market. There is originator and servicer concentration, because Avant is both, which raises back-up servicing and operational continuity questions. And eligibility drift is a live risk in a granular, fast-amortising pool: the mix of what is being originated can change materially inside a single reporting period, so borrowing base integrity depends on frequent, accurate data rather than on quarterly certificates.
Opportunities:
Short-duration, granular consumer pools reprice quickly, so spread capture is fast when the credit box holds. Facilities like this are also pipelines. A performing warehouse is the pre-condition for a term securitisation and eventually a rated exit, which is where the funding cost step-down and the manager’s own return live. For managers with genuine daily monitoring capability, this segment offers a return premium that exists precisely because most managers cannot operate at that data cadence.
Wells Fargo and Stellify Capital: $75 million into the lender, not the assets
Stellify Capital, a specialty finance platform serving the third-party originations channel, closed an up to $75 million credit facility with Wells Fargo Bank, following the company’s announcement in January of a $75 million facility from Sun Life Capital Management and the launch of Stellify in September 2025. Stellify is led by the former full leadership team of Pawnee Leasing. The firm focuses on purchasing small-ticket commercial equipment leases and loans of B, C and start-up credit quality exclusively from third-party originators and other lessors.
Why it matters:
This is the clearest lender finance transaction of the week. Wells Fargo is not underwriting a fleet of forklifts. It is underwriting the platform that underwrites the forklifts. The bank gets collateral diversification across thousands of small-ticket contracts, structural seniority above the platform’s equity, and a far lower operational cost per dollar deployed than it would achieve lending directly to those obligors.
It is also a relationship trade. Wells Fargo’s lender finance team had lent to this management team before, at Pawnee Leasing, and re-underwrote them at a new platform less than a year after launch. Lender finance remains one of the few segments where banks still compete hard on price and where twenty-year relationships genuinely determine outcomes.
Key risks:
The bank’s true exposure is look-through, to the underlying small-ticket obligors, not to Stellify itself. That exposure sits in credit tiers described as B, C and start-up, which is where loss volatility is highest in a slowdown. There is double leverage in the structure, and borrowing base integrity depends entirely on the platform’s own eligibility definitions, servicing discipline and reporting accuracy. Stellify is roughly ten months old and now has two $75 million facilities from different capital providers, so intercreditor arrangements and collateral allocation between them deserve attention.
Opportunities:
For the specialty lender, bank capital at the top of the stack lowers blended cost and makes the equity return work. For the bank, the segment offers diversification and stickiness that direct middle-market lending does not. And for asset managers watching the space, every dollar of lender finance is a leading indicator: it funds origination capacity that will show up as loan and lease paper looking for permanent capital six to twelve months from now.
Eclipse Business Capital: $55 million against working capital, into a soft cycle
Eclipse Business Capital provided a $55 million asset-based lending credit facility to a regional building materials supplier. The facility, secured by the company’s working capital assets, refinanced the company’s existing bank debt and provides additional liquidity and flexibility for ongoing working capital needs. Eclipse, founded in 2016, is one of the country’s leading independent asset-based lending platforms, providing revolving lines of credit and term loans secured by collateral such as accounts receivable, inventory, equipment, real estate and intellectual property.
Why it matters:
This is textbook asset-based lending, and the timing is the point. A regional building materials supplier is a cyclical distributor facing a soft construction market. A cash-flow lender looks at that and sees compressing EBITDA. An asset-based lender looks at the same company and sees receivables from contractors and inventory in stores, and lends against the collateral instead. The facility also refinanced existing bank debt, which is the classic pattern of a bank stepping back and an independent ABL platform stepping in.
Key risks:
Inventory valuation is the crux. Net orderly liquidation value on building materials moves with commodity prices, particularly lumber and steel, and appraisals can lag reality in a falling market. Seasonality affects both sales and inventory build. Receivables from contractors carry real dilution risk through disputes, retainage and slow pay, and customer concentration among a handful of large contractors amplifies that. Borrowing base drift is the thing to monitor, because eligibility erodes quietly through ageing and cross-ageing well before a covenant is tripped.
Opportunities:
Asset-based lending is counter-cyclical by design. It wins market share exactly when cash-flow lenders retreat, and it prices best when alternatives are scarce. For an independent platform with committed capital, a construction slowdown is an origination opportunity rather than a threat, provided the collateral monitoring is genuinely continuous rather than a monthly certificate exercise.
BOK Financial and Excedr: $17 million into life sciences equipment
Excedr, a provider of full-service laboratory equipment leasing solutions for the life sciences and healthcare industries, closed $25 million in growth capital, including a $17 million senior credit facility from BOK Financial and $8 million in equity from existing investors and global single-family offices. The BOK facility consists of a revolving line of credit and a term loan structured to support the continued expansion of Excedr’s equipment leasing portfolio. Excedr serves both emerging biotech companies and established industry players, supported by long-standing relationships with OEMs including Danaher, Sartorius and Bio-Rad. BOK Financial’s asset-based lending group specialises in structuring flexible credit facilities of $5 million to $50 million supported by accounts receivable, inventory and equipment.
Why it matters:
Small ticket, instructive structure. This is lender finance again, this time from a regional bank into a lessor, and it demonstrates that the product is not confined to large-cap platforms. The collateral is laboratory equipment with identifiable OEM provenance and a real secondary market, which is precisely the kind of hard asset that supports a blended revolver and term loan structure.
It is also a signal about how life sciences companies are funding themselves. Leasing mission-critical equipment rather than buying it preserves equity and working capital, and that preference strengthens when biotech equity markets are tight.
Key risks:
Residual value on specialised laboratory instruments is the primary exposure, and re-marketability varies enormously between a benchtop centrifuge and a highly configured analytical system. Lessee credit quality is the second: emerging biotech companies are funding-dependent counterparties whose ability to pay is tied to capital markets access rather than to operating cash flow. Concentration by lessee, by OEM and by therapeutic area all need monitoring, and equipment redeployment costs can materially erode recovery assumptions.
Opportunities:
Equipment leasing into life sciences pairs hard collateral with a structural demand tailwind. For the lessor, deeper OEM partnerships improve both acquisition cost and remarketing outcomes, which is what makes the residual assumptions defensible. For lenders, a facility of this size with real asset coverage and a defined secondary market is exactly the profile that scales into a larger warehouse if the platform performs.
BizCap and Project Bravo: $12.5 million structured around the operating cycle
BizCap, a national commercial finance and debt advisory firm, closed a $12.5 million senior secured revolving credit facility for Project Bravo, a government-contract fulfilment and distribution firm providing sourcing, procurement and logistics solutions to government agencies and government-related customers, and a portfolio company of TEEDUP. According to the company, the transaction required a structure built around the full operating cycle rather than a conventional accounts receivable-only solution, because the company pays suppliers before collecting from its government customers. The facility increases borrowing capacity as the business grows following its 2024 acquisition, and restructures existing debt obligations to provide greater financial flexibility.
Why it matters:
The interesting detail is why an accounts receivable line was not enough. Government contract fulfilment involves paying suppliers well ahead of collection, so the funding gap sits in inventory and in-transit goods rather than in billed receivables. Structuring around that means giving credit for stages of the working capital cycle that a standard formula ignores, which is harder to underwrite and much harder to monitor.
Key risks:
Government receivables have excellent ultimate credit quality and poor payment timing, so the exposure is liquidity rather than loss. Appropriations risk, contract renewal risk and administrative delay all extend days sales outstanding. Inventory eligibility in a fulfilment model requires clear title, location control and evidence of contract allocation. And a sponsor-owned platform integrating a 2024 acquisition adds execution risk on top of the operating cycle risk.
Opportunities:
Facilities that credit the whole working capital cycle command better economics than plain receivables lines because fewer lenders can underwrite them. For lenders able to monitor inventory and in-transit collateral with the same rigour as receivables, this is a defensible niche with a counterparty, the US government, that ultimately pays.
Stifel Venture Banking to Shoulder Innovations, $50MM medtech venture debt
Stifel Venture Banking provided Shoulder Innovations, a medical device company, with a $15 million term loan, a $30 million undrawn line of credit and a $5 million accordion, $50 million of total capacity.
Why it matters:
Medtech joins biotech in the non-dilutive venture debt story. A staged structure, drawn term loan plus undrawn capacity plus accordion, lets a growth-stage device company fund commercialisation without giving up equity, and gives the lender optionality tied to performance.
Key risks:
Commercialisation execution, regulatory and reimbursement pathways for devices, and cash runway against undrawn capacity that depends on milestones.
Opportunity:
Venture lenders who can monitor drawdown conditions, covenants and cash runway continuously can support the full commercial journey rather than a single tranche.
Also announced
Three smaller transactions rounded out the week and are worth noting for the shape of the market rather than the size of the cheques. Modern Banking Group provided a $4.3 million recapitalisation loan on a real estate asset. Briar Capital Real Estate Fund provided a $2.1 million real estate loan to a beverage products company, the kind of owner-occupied property financing that often sits alongside a working capital revolver. National Business Capital provided a $1.8 million term loan to Interstate Industrial in energy services.
Small facilities, but the same underlying requirement: collateral to value, monitor and report on.
Takeaways
- Lender finance was the week’s real story. Three facilities totalling $392 million went to lenders and lessors rather than to operating companies, funded by a money-centre bank, a regional bank and an alternative asset manager. That is the same product being written from three completely different balance sheets, and it is one of the clearest indicators of where origination capacity is being built.
- The syndicated bank market is defending the top end. An eight-bank club, a Term Loan A structure, a mostly undrawn revolver and tighter spreads than the facility it replaced. For scaled, cash-generative borrowers, banks are competing hard and private credit is not always in the room. Managers should expect that competitive pressure to work its way down the size curve.
- Asset managers are now writing warehouse lines directly. The Aperture and Avant facility is a bank product on a fund balance sheet. This is where asset-based finance is heading, and it raises the operational bar considerably. Underwriting granular consumer collateral at $300 million scale requires asset-level surveillance that most fund infrastructure was never built to deliver.
- Structure is diverging from size. A $12.5 million facility structured around the full working capital cycle is operationally more demanding than a $1 billion revolver. Complexity and ticket size have decoupled, which means resourcing and monitoring cannot be allocated by deal size alone.
- The tail keeps working. Five facilities from $55 million down to $1.8 million, across building supplies, government logistics, real estate and energy services, in five working days. This is the part of the market that never makes headlines and never stops compounding.
How Cardo AI helps Asset Managers and Lenders
Every transaction above creates the same operational obligation, regardless of ticket size. Someone has to collect the data, normalise it, test it against the structure, monitor it continuously and report it to investors and lenders in a form they trust.
A $1 billion syndicated revolver requires covenant and utilisation tracking across eight institutions. A $300 million consumer warehouse requires daily eligibility testing against a pool that turns over constantly. A $75 million lender finance facility requires look-through into thousands of small-ticket contracts that the borrower, not the lender, originated. A $12.5 million government logistics revolver requires inventory and in-transit collateral to be tracked with the same discipline as billed receivables.
Cardo AI is the operating system for that work:
- Loan tape ingestion across any source or format, so data from originators, servicers and trustees arrives in one normalised model rather than in a hundred spreadsheets.
- Borrowing base, eligibility and waterfall computation, automated and auditable, with the calculation logic transparent rather than buried in a template.
- Concentration, covenant and trigger monitoring, tested continuously rather than at month end, so eligibility drift and covenant pressure surface while there is still time to act.
- Portfolio analytics and stress testing, including cash flow projection and scenario analysis at loan and pool level.
- Institutional-grade investor and lender reporting, generated from the same underlying data rather than reconstructed manually each period.
- Multi-asset-class onboarding, from equipment lease books and consumer card receivables to inventory-heavy ABL facilities and commercial real estate.
The lenders in this roundup operate across consumer credit, equipment leasing, building materials, government logistics, life sciences and technology. The asset classes have almost nothing in common. The data problem is identical.
Sources
ABL Advisor deal tables (July 27–31, 2026); company press releases via Business Wire, GlobeNewswire, PR Newswire and Bloomberg; ABF Journal; and issuer investor relations pages.
If you’re scaling an asset-based or private credit book, we should talk.