Market Forces Driving a Talent Acquisition Spree
The private credit landscape is undergoing a significant shift as firms scramble to bolster their restructuring teams. With U.S. corporate bankruptcy filings hitting a 14-year high in 2024 (694 filings, the highest since 2010), lenders are facing a new reality that demands specialized expertise.
“There have been a lot of acute impacts starting with Covid, followed by inflation, followed by interest rates staying high for longer,” notes an executive at a major private-credit firm who preferred to remain anonymous. “I think there’ve been a lot of shocks across the board to private credit.”
This hiring surge isn’t limited to industry giants – it spans the entire market from behemoths like Blackstone and Goldman Sachs to midsize players managing less than $10 billion in assets. A quick scan of job boards reveals openings at Blue Owl, Golub Capital, and others specifically targeting professionals with workout or distressed credit skills.
Beyond Traditional Bankruptcies
What’s particularly interesting is how firms are strategically building teams for specific purposes beyond conventional bankruptcy proceedings:
Liability Management Exercises (LMEs): These transactions allow struggling companies to restructure debt, often extending maturities while avoiding formal bankruptcy. LMEs represented a striking 69% of dual-track defaults in 2024 – the highest level in nearly four years.
Distress-for-Control Transactions: This approach, where lenders acquire significant debt positions to influence restructuring outcomes, has tripled in frequency. Antares Capital reports observing about three lender takeover situations annually in recent years, compared to just one per year before 2022.
The deterioration of loan documentation has further complicated matters. “As this tactic has become commonplace versus one-off and there’ve been more and more of these out-of-court negotiations, it’s led to the need for expertise and talent in order to protect our investments,” explains Lauren Basmadjian, global head of liquid credit at Carlyle Group.
The Premium on Experience
The talent war comes at a premium. Firms recruiting VP to partner-level professionals with restructuring expertise and private-equity portfolio operations knowledge are offering compensation packages ranging from $500,000 to $1.5 million in base salary and bonus, according to John Rubinetti, partner at executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles.
Most new hires (70%) move from one investment firm to another, while 30% arrive from consulting firms like McKinsey & Co. These restructuring teams typically range from one to six professionals, depending on firm size.
A Strategic Advantage
Antares Capital has taken an aggressive approach, expanding its workout team to 18 people – nearly triple the typical size. Their strategy goes beyond mere crisis response.
“Even though people are looking to acquire these resources, I don’t think it will be as successful as they’re hoping because we don’t believe that the workout team can just be activated,” says Vivek Mathew, head of asset management at Antares. “We feel like they need to be integrated.”
The firm implements a proactive approach: whenever a company deviates from the underwriting case, even minimally, Antares assigns a workout specialist to shadow the situation. This ensures seamless transition if full intervention becomes necessary.
Senior Managing Director Michele Kovatchis credits this approach for early identification of issues: “Once we start to see any little bits of weakness, we’ll add that resource. Then, when we see that this isn’t just transitory…that person can very quickly step into those situations and take it over.”
The Road Ahead
As economic uncertainty persists and interest rates remain higher than anticipated, the demand for restructuring talent will likely continue growing. Firms that successfully integrate these specialists may gain a significant competitive advantage in navigating the increasingly complex world of distressed debt.
For professionals with the right skill set, opportunities abound. The private credit industry’s recognition of restructuring expertise as a critical capability marks an important evolution in how these firms approach risk and portfolio management.
This blog post is based on information originally reported by Isaac Taylor for The Wall Street Journal on March 12, 2025.
