From KKR to Blackstone, global PE firms betting big on private credit

KKR's US counterpart Blackstone disbursed about Rs 3,500 crore in the last year in both real estate and non-real estate private credit

At a time when public sector banks (PSBs) have pulled out of corporate credit, and private ones are coming out of their woes, bulge bracket private equity (PE) firms such as KKR, Blackstone and Brookfield are making the most of the situation in the private credit space, including corporate and real estate credit.

Leading the race is US-based KKR. It disbursed Rs 8,173 crore of corporate loans and Rs 4,256 crore of real estate loans in 2018 — almost double of what it did in 2017 in both the segments.

It disbursed about Rs 1,000 crore in real estate financing from January