Barely 18 months after the US economy seemed to be imploding, market conditions have rebounded spectacularly. Six leaders in the private debt industry spoke to Robin Blumenthal about the bounce back and the frenzied deal-making environment.

When we held our US private debt roundtable a year ago, the participants were cautiously optimistic that the asset class would weather the storm of covid-19. But no one could have predicted the strength of the recovery and the extent to which, 12 months on,
they would be worrying about the risks of the market over-heating.

The US economy has already wiped out its pandemic losses, helped on by the $1.9 trillion stimulus passed in March and the prospect of at least another trillion dollars in infrastructure spending on the horizon. Inflation, now at its highest levels since just before the 2008 financial crisis, has become the major macroeconomic concern in the US.