The T. Rowe OHA Select Private Credit Fund, or OCREDIT, already has $1.5 billion of investible capital, according to a statement seen by Bloomberg News. That includes more than $600 million raised in equity commitment from T. Rowe and a group of global institutional investors, with the offering now opening to individuals, it said.
OCREDIT follows the example pioneered by Blackstone Inc. with its BCRED fund, which now has about $48 billion of assets under management. It’s structured as a non-traded perpetual business development company — a modified version of the BDCs that were established by the US government in the 1980s to facilitate lending to small and medium-sized firms. In a modified BDC, investors have the option to withdraw their capital, though with a quarterly cap.
“We expect the substantial growth in demand for private financing solutions to continue to drive an attractive investment opportunity for OCREDIT,” Alan Schrager, senior partner and portfolio manager at Oak Hill and chairman of OCREDIT. “Directly originated loans at the top of the capital structure offer the most attractive absolute and relative value in corporate credit currently.”