First quarter earnings reports from major public alternative asset managers Apollo, Ares, Blackstone, Blue Owl, Brookfield, Carlyle Group, KKR and TPG struck a consistent chord: Keep calm and carry on.
The firms sought to ease concerns raised by a wave of redemption requests affecting non-traded business development companies and interval funds focused on private credit. The companies underscored their ability to meet redemption requests without resorting to extreme measures. In addition, many posted net increased fundraising from the private wealth channel across all private market strategies. And some managers provided additional disclosures in an attempt to stem concerns about the underlying loans in their private credit funds.
The Redemption Queue
According to Robert A. Stanger & Co., which tracks non-listed alternative funds, gross sales for public non-listed BDCs came to $4.9 billion in the first quarter, down 46% from the fourth quarter of 2025 and 59% compared with the first quarter of 2025.
That fundraising, however, was offset by redemptions. Overall, sponsors met $6.9 billion in redemption requests, giving the sector a quarterly outflow of $2 billion. According to Stanger, it’s the first time quarterly outflows have surpassed quarterly inflows for non-listed BDCs.
Overall, Stanger found that five BDCs met all redemption requests up to quarterly caps (typically 5% of AUM) and prorated remaining requests. Two funds (Blackstone Private Credit Fund and Oaktree Strategic Credit Fund) exceeded the standard 5% cap to meet requests.
In all, Stanger said 52% of redemption requests were met, leaving $6.3 billion in unmet redemptions for the quarter.
Stanger’s BDC Total Return Index was flat, registering a slight decline of 0.03%. (Over the trailing 12 months, the index returned 6.2% vs. a 14.0% decline for the S&P BDC Total Return index, which tracks publicly traded BDCs).
“[T]he structures are functioning as designed: sponsors delivered a record level of liquidity in Q1, and no NAV BDC has gated redemptions,” Kevin T. Gannon, chairman and CEO of Stanger, said in a statement. “As we saw with NAV REITs in 2022, these vehicles were built to manage periods of elevated redemptions, and Q1 showed that the structure can absorb meaningful liquidity pressure.”
The firms all said concerns about private credit are overblown. For example, during his firm’s earnings call, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan contended that there’s been too much focus on one sliver of the market.
“The investment-grade private credit market, which is being driven by the global industrial renaissance, is a $38 trillion market,” Rowan said. “Therefore, the total opportunity in private credit is some $40 trillion. The obsession with this very narrow corner of the market, this $2 trillion slice, levered lending, is frankly a failure of imagination.”
He added that some of the outflows are being driven by investors seeking to pivot.
“Most of the funds investors have invested in levered lending have come from the sale of their equity portfolio,” Rowan said. “This is not people who have taken their Treasury portfolio or their investment-grade portfolio and gone into levered lending. This is people who have sold their equities to go into levered lending. The notion that a loan is somehow riskier because it wasn’t originated by a bank is not a coherent argument. Private credit is just credit.”
Product Development and Fundraising
The asset managers touted their efforts to build out product lines and a net increase in fundraising across all alternative sectors, despite some experiencing outflows in private credit.
Ares, for example, raised $5 billion in the quarter, including $3 billion on its two U.S. direct lending funds. On a year-over-year basis, its wealth AUM increased 54% to $68 billion.
“We believe that our diversified product offering is enabling us to gain market share as advisors broaden their focus away from U.S. private credit toward other alternative products like infrastructure, real estate and private equity,” Michael Arougheti, Ares co-founder, partner, CEO and director, said during his firm’s earnings call. “For example, during the first quarter, our core infrastructure fund raised $1 billion in equity subscriptions and now has over $3 billion of AUM, and the fund just launched on its first major platform with its first capital raise on that platform closing today.”
Blackstone reported AUM in its private wealth platform has reached $310 billion, up 14% year-over-year. In the first quarter, it raised $10 billion, including $7 billion from its evergreen strategies led by BXPE (a semiliquid strategy focused on private equity launched last year), at $2.5 billion.
Blue Owl, which has been at the center of the private credit redemption wave, said it raised $3 billion in equity through the private wealth channel during the quarter, predominantly in products focused on real assets, GP strategic capital, alternative credit and GP-led secondaries.
Meanwhile, KKR said it raised $4 billion in capital across its K-series of funds, designed for the private wealth channel. Overall, the firm said 12% of the $127 billion it raised over the last 12 months has been in its K-Series of funds, and that AUM across those funds stood at $38 billion.
“Our performance, deployment and capital raising continue to be in line or ahead of our expectations,” KKR CFO Robert Lewin said during the firm’s earnings call. “Given all the market noise, we were candidly surprised by the strength of flows in Q1. But we also do expect a slowdown in Q2, consistent with what we saw after the tariff announcements last year.”