Blue Owl BDC's CEO, Craig Packer, appeared on CNBC on November 19, 2025, to discuss a significant development in the private credit world that was intended to bolster market confidence. Blue Owl, known for providing loans to the software sector, announced on Wednesday that it successfully sold $1.4 billion of its loans to institutional investors at 99.7% of their par value. This transaction indicated that savvy investors had thoroughly examined the loans and found them to be nearly as valuable as initially estimated, as Packer highlighted in several interviews throughout the week.
However, instead of stabilizing the market, the news led to a sharp decline in Blue Owl's share prices, as well as those of other alternative asset managers, driven by concerns about potential future repercussions. A critical part of the announcement involved Blue Owl replacing voluntary quarterly redemptions with mandatory 'capital distributions' funded through future asset sales, earnings, or other deals.
'The optics are bad, even if the loan book is fine,' remarked Brian Finneran of Truist Securities in his commentary circulated on Thursday, pointing to investor fears that the sales signaled accelerated redemptions, requiring the liquidation of higher-quality assets to fulfill those demands.
The market perceived Blue Owl's strategy as halting redemptions from a pressurized fund, despite Packer's clarification that investors could expect to receive around 30% of their capital back by March 31—substantially more than the previous 5% allowable quarterly. 'We're not halting redemptions, we're just changing the form,' Packer explained to CNBC on Friday. 'If anything, we're accelerating redemptions.'