Blackstone’s Flagship Private Credit Fund Stumbles; Texas Stock Exchange Aggressively Poaches NASDAQ Top Talent; and US Banking Regulators Ease GFC Restrictions
- Dipo Owolabi
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Cracks are beginning to show across markets as pressure builds from multiple angles. Blackstone’s flagship private credit fund has posted its first monthly loss in over three years, raising fresh concerns about liquidity risks in the booming $2 trillion sector. In the courts, Elon Musk has been found liable for misleading investors during his $44 billion Twitter takeover, with damages running into billions. Meanwhile, the upstart Texas Stock Exchange is aggressively poaching talent from incumbents to challenge Wall Street dominance, just as U.S. regulators move to loosen post-2008 bank capital rules marking a major shift in financial oversight. All this and more in today’s Read It And Eat! |
Markets Around The World
Markets as of 20th March 2026. Cells in RED mean that the value is down, cells in Green mean the value is up.
MAJOR HEADLINES
Blackstone's Flagship Private Credit Fund Posts First Monthly Loss In Over Three Years
Blackstone's flagship private credit fund posted its first monthly loss in more than three years in February, the fund's website showed on Friday, amid surging investor worries over the sector's liquidity strains. The fund, BCRED, reported a total loss of 0.4% in February, its first since September 2022, when it posted a loss of 1.3%.
The Morningstar LSTA index of publicly traded leveraged loans fell 0.8% in February, according to Morningstar's website. Shares of the world's largest alternative asset manager have lost more than 28% of their value so far this year. BCRED wrote down the value of a "select" number of loans during the month, the Financial Times reported earlier in the day, citing a letter to financial advisers. The report said customer service software firm Medallia was among the companies. "BCRED continues to deliver strong performance for its investors, with a 9.5% annualized total return since inception for Class I shares, a 360 bps premium to leveraged loans," Blackstone said, adding the fund has outperformed the leveraged loan market by 100 basis points so far this year.
Investor jitters over the state of private credit funds have spilled on to Wall Street, with some major U.S. banks tightening lending to the industry even as funds cap withdrawals. JPMorgan Chase marked down the value of certain loans to private credit players earlier this month, a move that will reduce lending to the funds. Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley and rival BlackRock were among the firms that limited withdrawals from their funds after a surge in redemption requests. Reuters
Jury Finds Elon Musk Misled Investors During Twitter Purchase
A jury has found Elon Musk liable for defrauding investors by deliberately driving down Twitter's stock price in the tumultuous months leading up to his 2022 acquisition of the social media company for $44 billion. But it absolved him of some fraud allegations, finding that he did not “scheme” to mislead investors. The civil trial in San Francisco centered on a class-action lawsuit filed just before Musk took control of Twitter, which he later renamed X.
The nine-person jury returned the verdict after nearly four days of deliberation, nearly three weeks after the trial began on March 2. They said that while Musk was liable for misleading investors with two tweets including one that said the Twitter deal was “temporarily on hold,” he did not do so with a statement he made on a podcast and that he did not intentionally “scheme” to defraud investors.
The jury awarded shareholders between about $3 and $8 per stock per day as damages, which the plaintiffs' lawyers said amounts to about $2.1 billion in stock and another $500 million in options. Musk's fortune is currently estimated at about $814 billion, much of it tied up in Tesla shares. Musk's legal team referenced other cases Musk won and said they will appeal. Much of the trial focused on Musk’s claims about the number of bots on Twitter. Yahoo.Finance
The Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE), a new Dallas-based bourse backed by major investors such as Michael Dell and BlackRock, is accelerating its push to compete with established players by recruiting senior talent from rivals. As part of this effort, the exchange has hired executives from both Nasdaq Inc. and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), signaling its ambition to attract stock listings and build credibility ahead of its planned launch. The move is part of a broader strategy to position Texas as a growing financial hub and an alternative to traditional Wall Street dominance.
Among the key appointments is Greg Ferrari, the former head of North American exchange trading at Nasdaq, who will serve as TXSE’s chief operating officer and oversee day-to-day operations. In addition, reports indicate that Liz Hocker, a former NYSE capital markets executive, has joined as global head of listings. These hires bring deep industry experience and are seen as critical to building out the exchange’s leadership team and attracting companies to list on the platform.
The recruitment drive underscores TXSE’s broader strategy of challenging incumbent exchanges by assembling experienced leadership and leveraging strong financial backing. The exchange, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and is targeting a 2026 debut, is positioning itself as a serious competitor in U.S. capital markets. Analysts note that poaching top executives from dominant exchanges not only strengthens TXSE’s capabilities but also highlights intensifying competition as Texas emerges as a key battleground for financial market infrastructure. Bloomberg |
US Regulators Ease Rules Set After The Great Financial Crisis
US federal regulators are trying to soften bank requirements, loosening the amount of capital US banks must have, in what would be some of the biggest changes to bank restrictions since the 2008 financial crisis and a huge win for financial institutions. On Thursday, US Federal Reserve officials are expected to vote to lower capital requirements, the funds they need to cover risky assets for the biggest banks by 4.8%, which could free up capital for banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Larger regional banks like PNC would see their requirements drop by 5.2%, while requirements banks with less than $100bn in assets would fall by 7.7%. Capital requirements were increased after Wall Street’s risky bets triggered the 2008 financial crisis. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator and ranking member of the Senate banking committee, who helped create regulations after the 2008 financial crisis, said in a statement that the banking industry has been on “a multi-year lobbying assault to gut modest safeguards on Wall Street risk-taking”.
The changes will be a major revision to Basel III, global banking regulations that were set up in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in 2023, US regulators were looking to tightenBasel III and make large banks hold more capital. But the major banks pushed back aggressively, arguing in 2024 that they helped stabilize the economy after SVB’s fall and that stronger regulations could lead more businesses to riskier lines of credit. The winds of regulation changed when Bowman replaced Michael Barr, a Fed governor who was the head of banking supervision under Joe Biden and was a staunch advocate for tighter capital requirements. Wall Street Journal
Minor Headlines
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JPMorgan deployed tech to track junior bankers' working hours Financial Times
Robert Mueller, special counsel who probed but did not charge Trump, dies at 81 Reuters
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