Private credit is not a category.

Private credit has had its moment. The asset class has roughly tripled since the post-GFC decade, and “private credit” now appears in retail brochures, in mid-market deal sheets, and at investment committees that used not to touch it. Much of what is now labelled private credit is, in fact, what used to be called mezzanine, or subordinated debt, or bridge finance, or stretch senior. It has always been there. What has changed is the depth of the capital pool.

From our desk, “private credit” collapses at least four distinct kinds of transaction:

Mezzanine behind senior bank debt. Project funding where a bank will do 60 per cent and the principal needs another 15 to make equity work. This is the classical mezzanine slot. It is priced by risk, not by competition, and the spread is wide.

Whole-loan private credit. The bank doesn’t appear. A single private lender does the full stack, typically for a short-duration development or a complex recapitalisation where bank process timelines don’t work. The price is higher; the close is faster.

Structured facilities for operating businesses. Portfolio lines, asset-backed revolvers, and working-capital structures for operating entities whose balance sheet is too complex for a bank credit matrix. This is genuine balance-sheet-backed lending, and it looks more like classical secured credit than anything new.

Bespoke bridges. Short-duration, equity-like returns, often against a specific collateral pool or an anticipated refinance event. This is where the “new” private credit market most visibly lives.

The four have different lenders, different prices, different covenants, and different right answers. Treating them as one category is the most common mistake we see in prospect calls. Our first job, most of the time, is to name the deal correctly. The structure follows from the name.