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Blue Owl Capital Inc.’s Craig Packer has been something of a mainstay on the New York Stock Exchange in recent years, ringing the opening bell multiple times to toast the private credit giant’s public funds.On Wednesday, minutes after the market opened, his mood was anything but celebratory.
Blue Owl had just announced it was scrapping a planned merger of two of its private credit funds, backtracking on a plan revealed Nov. 5 after scrutiny arose over the potential losses some investors would have to swallow as part of the deal. The parent company’s shares had fallen this week to the lowest level since 2023.
Packer bemoaned “negative articles” about private credit that caused its stock to sink. When it comes to Blue Owl’s business development companies, the firm’s co-founder said on CNBC, “there’s no emergency here.”
The abrupt reversal is a rare egg-on-face moment for Blue Owl, which for years has been held up as the poster child of the boom times in the $1.7 trillion private credit market. Created as a merger between Owl Rock Capital and Dyal Capital Partners in 2021, it has pitched itself as a one-stop financing shop that can compete with banks and the biggest alternative asset managers.
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