Private Credit & Project Management

The Reality of Private Credit Markets

Unlike the regulated banking sector, private credit is broad and often does not follow a predictable, standard process. At one end are institutional‑grade non‑bank lenders and established fund managers; at the other, small private investors and capital pools that can be highly variable in quality. For a borrower, this breadth makes it hard to distinguish between genuinely aligned capital and structures that are effectively “loan to own” from the outset.

Over the years, our work in this market has centred on treating each transaction as a project as much as a piece of credit. That has meant reviewing design documentation in detail, building robust feasibilities and structuring the required debt to the project’s actual programme and critical path, rather than to a template term sheet. The emphasis has been on understanding how the project will really be delivered before deciding how it should be funded.

Approaching transactions this way has naturally led to closer relationships with a subset of capital partners, from institutional non‑bank lenders through to Ultra High Net Worth investors. With a clear view of delivery from planning through to completion, misalignments and knowledge gaps are resolved before they reach the lender, which in turn supports a more functional relationship between lender and borrower and improves the certainty of project execution.