“Private credit” means raising money from long-term locked-up investors and using their money to make loans to companies. The fact that the investors in private credit funds have their money locked up is not incidental; it is the point of private credit. Because the investors’ money is locked up:

1. Private credit funds have a safe funding model. There cannot be a “run on the bank” where all the investors ask for their money back, forcing the funds to sell their loans at fire-sale prices, because the investors can’t ask for their money back. Private credit, in its simplest core implementation, is not systemically risky, because it is not vulnerable to runs.
2. Because they have a safe funding model, private credit funds are much less regulated than banks. This keeps costs down and also lets them do stuff — like lend to companies at high leverage ratios — that banks are discouraged from doing. (It also helps with recruiting: Banks are boring, but private credit these days is where the action is, and pays well.)
3. Because their money is locked up and committed, private credit funds can be more attractive lenders to companies. They can move faster and be more flexible than banks, whose balance sheets are fragile and who have to market and syndicate many loans. They can promise to hold loans for the long term, to be relationship lenders💡 The Bloomberg opinion article argues that regulators must actively deregulate to counteract overregulation, using the irony of needing government intervention to reduce bureaucracy as a central theme. It highlights examples like excessive compliance burdens in banking and tech, where rules stifle innovation, and posits that targeted rollbacks—such as easing capital requirements—could unleash economic growth without risking systemic failures. The piece contrasts U.S. deregulation potential, which could free up $2.6 trillion in bank lending capacity, with tighter regimes in Switzerland and the EU, urging swift policy shifts to boost productivity. [read] rather than transactional financiers. Some companies like this sort of thing, and are willing to take the tradeoff, which is that private credit is normally more expensive than other forms of credit. Put another way, the expected return on private credit lending should be higher, because private credit funds get paid an illiquidity premium💡 The Bloomberg Opinion article from June 27, 2023, by Matt Levine argues that Silicon Valley's tech elite are increasingly using high-performance drugs like Adderall, modafinil, and even ketamine or microdosing psychedelics to boost productivity amid intense work cultures and startup pressures. It highlights anecdotes from founders and executives who openly discuss these substances as tools for sustained focus and creativity, drawing parallels to Wall Street's past amphetamine use but noting tech's more experimental, biohacking approach. Levine cautions that while some swear by the benefits, the trend raises concerns about long-term health risks, dependency, and whether it truly enhances innovation or just fuels burnout. [read]. 

Everything about private credit — its systemic safety, its light regulation, its go-anywhere investing approach, its high returns — flows from the fact that the investors can’t get their money back whenever they want.

Traditionally, the long-term locked-up investors were institutional investors who could easily bear the risk of not getting their money back for years: pensions, endowments, sovereigns, and especially life insurance and annuity companies, which have predictable long-term liabilities and which frequently are owned by the same asset managers that run the private credit funds.

And there private credit was, in a paradise of low risk and high returns, when it made, collectively, a fateful decision. The decision was “these long-term locked-up institutional investors are great, but really we should sell this stuff to retail.” Why did the private credit industry decide to sell its stuff to individual retail investors? Here are four possible reasons:

1. Altruism: “These institutional investors are getting such great returns from private credit; it is not fair for retail investors to miss out; we should let them in.” 
2. Growth: “We have tapped out every last dollar of institutional capital, but individuals have trillions of dollars of retirement savings and almost no private credit. If we want to sell more private credit, we need to sell to them.”
3. Top-ticking: “Man, private credit is in a bubble and we’ve made a lot of really aggressive loans; who is going to hold the bag if not unsophisticated retail investors?”
4. The squeezing of public asset managers. This is a subtler one, but big mutual fund managers have had a rough few years: Individual investors want extremely low-cost index funds, so it is harder and harder to make money💡 The Bloomberg Opinion article from October 23, 2023, by Matt Levine argues that mutual funds are facing a sharp decline in popularity due to high fees, underperformance relative to low-cost index funds and ETFs, and structural shifts favoring passive investing. It highlights data showing U.S. equity mutual fund assets dropping from a peak of $12 trillion in 2021 to under $10 trillion, with outflows accelerating as investors flock to ETFs amid better liquidity and tax efficiency. Levine notes this trend signals the potential obsolescence of traditional active mutual funds, though some niches like bond funds persist. [read] by selling them mutual funds containing public stocks and bonds. Selling them private credit funds, though, might earn you higher fees: It is harder to do low-cost index funds in private credit, and easier to argue that you have some special sauce. And so it’s not always that private credit firms decided they wanted more retail customers; sometimes it’s that big asset managers with lots of retail customers decided💡 JPMorgan undercharged a counterparty for a trade, as detailed in a Bloomberg Opinion article from November 4, 2024. The piece, linked on Hacker News, highlights this pricing error in the context of the bank's trading activities. No full article text is available in search results, limiting details to the title and discussion reference. [read] that they wanted💡 Bloomberg's opinion piece discusses algorithmic pricing software used by grocery stores like Kroger, which dynamically adjusts prices on perishable items such as kale based on real-time demand, inventory, and competitor data to maximize profits. The article highlights how this technology, similar to surge pricing in ride-sharing, can lead to rapid price fluctuations—e.g., kale jumping from $2.99 to $4.99 per bunch within hours—and raises concerns about consumer transparency and potential collusion risks among retailers. It argues that while efficient for businesses, such opaque algorithms may erode trust and prompt regulatory scrutiny. [read] private credit to sell to those customers.

Collectively, I think, that list of reasons should make you nervous. None of those reasons sounds great for credit discipline or returns. When private credit managers invest relatively small amounts of money for sophisticated institutional investors — in many cases, for their own balance sheets, in the form of their affiliated insurers — they can try to make only good loans and seek high rates of return. When they are looking to put trillions of dollars of retail money to work rapidly, you know, less so.

But there was, it turns out, another reason to be nervous, one that I did not fully appreciate a year ago, which is that retail investors really do not like to lock up their money for the long term. If you raise money from a pension or an endowment or an annuity company, you say “thanks, gonna make some seven-year loans, so I’ll give you this money back in seven years, bye,” and they leave you alone for seven years. But you cannot quite offer that proposition to individual investors💡 The Bloomberg Opinion newsletter "Everyone Wants a Pension," dated March 3, 2026, discusses growing interest in defined-benefit pensions amid market volatility, geopolitical risks, and inflation concerns affecting retirement confidence. It highlights how retirement industry providers like Voya enable participants to stay invested through employer-sponsored plans, avoiding volatile assets like commodities or precious metals, which fiduciaries often exclude from core offerings. Related discussions note sophisticated investors redeeming from illiquid private credit amid oil surges and stock-bond declines, contrasting with the stability of retirement plans. [read], even individual investors who are saving for retirement in 20 years. Those investors should be willing to lock up their money for the long term, but they apparently aren’t, in part because of genuine risks to their cash needs (they might get sick and need cash, etc.) and in part for reasons of stereotypical retail-investor psychology (they might get nervous and pull their money when headlines are bad).

And so when private credit funds raise money from individuals, it is generally in one of two ways:

1. Publicly-traded business development companies. (For boring legal and historical reasons, a retail-oriented private credit fund is called a “business development company,” or “BDC.”) These are closed-end funds with permanent capital that trade on the stock exchange. The private credit firm gets long-term locked-up capital (the investors can’t withdraw their money), while the retail investors in the fund get instant total liquidity (they can sell their shares, on the stock exchange, whenever they want). The downside is that, especially these days, publicly traded BDCs tend to trade at big discounts💡 The Financial Times article, titled "US banks face $1tn in unrealised losses on securities," reports that major US banks are grappling with approximately $1 trillion in unrealised losses on their bond holdings as interest rates remain elevated. These losses, primarily on Treasury and mortgage-backed securities, have surged due to the Federal Reserve's rate hikes since 2022, though banks like JPMorgan and Bank of America hold them at amortised cost, shielding reported earnings. Regulators are scrutinising liquidity risks, but the piece notes no immediate systemic threat akin to the 2023 regional bank failures. [read] to net asset value, which makes it hard for them to raise money💡 Bill Ackman's Pershing Square attempted to launch a US-traded closed-end fund targeting up to $25 billion but canceled the IPO on July 31, 2024, after demand dropped to just $2 billion, effectively raising no money. This setback coincided with the fund erasing most of its 2024 year-to-date gains, shifting from +8.7% mid-July to +0.7% by month-end after a 4.7% July loss, driven partly by a 24% drop in its Universal Music Group stake following weak earnings. The article, from Bloomberg Opinion's Matt Levine, analyzes the deal's structural challenges and contrasts it with a similar successful fundraise by another manager, highlighting Ackman's fundraising difficulties amid market gains like the S&P 500's 15.8% YTD rise. [read]: If your shares trade at 80 cents on the dollar, you can’t really sell new shares at 100.
2. Private, non-listed, “semi-liquid” BDCs. These are closed-end funds that don’t trade in the secondary market (and so don’t trade at 80 cents on the dollar). Like listed BDCs, they are fairly permanent funds, and investors can’t generally withdraw their money.^[1] But you can’t give retail investors no liquidity, and so private BDCs normally let investors withdraw up to 5% of their money, collectively, each quarter: The BDC will do a tender offer for up to 5% of its shares, so if you want to cash out you can. But it’s only 5%, so the BDC can manage its liquidity needs (and never needs to sell any loans^[2]).

And private credit firms have been raising money from individual investors through these sorts of vehicles for years now, though the attention paid to them has really accelerated in the last year or so, in part because of intense lobbying to put more private credit in individuals’ retirement accounts💡 On August 7, 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order directing federal agencies to expand 401(k) plan participants' access to alternative assets like cryptocurrency, private equity, private credit, venture capital, and real estate, potentially integrating them into structures such as target-date funds. While supporters praised it as democratizing investment opportunities, critics highlighted risks of increased legal exposure for plan sponsors without stronger fiduciary safeguards, as ERISA standards still require rigorous due diligence. Recommendations for fiduciaries include starting with small, diversified allocations via professionally managed vehicles like Collective Investment Trusts or Self-Directed Brokerage Windows, thoroughly documenting processes, and vetting providers for transparency in fees, valuations, and liquidity. [read]. 

And now the headlines are bad: There have been “late-cycle accidents💡 Banks are increasingly making loans to non-bank financial institutions, a trend highlighted in recent market turbulence where issues like alleged fraud and collateral failures in these loans have caused regional bank stocks to tumble, such as at Zions and Western Alliance. This lending exposes banks to heightened credit risk from non-banks, echoing 2023 regional banking crisis fears amid outflows from high-yield and leveraged-loan funds totaling $1.3 billion each in the latest week. Analysts note fragmented private credit markets and competition pushing banks to lend to non-bank lenders, raising questions about underwriting controls and systemic safety. [read]” in credit markets generally, and there has been a wave of fear that artificial intelligence will undermine the software businesses💡 Private credit funds faced significant challenges even before the "Saaspocalypse"—a wave of distress in software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies—due to overleveraged loans, weak covenants, and reliance on floating-rate debt amid rising interest rates. The Bloomberg newsletter highlights how private credit managers extended aggressive financing to risky borrowers, leading to defaults and restructurings, with examples like SaaS firms burdened by high debt loads from the low-rate era. It warns that while the sector boomed post-2022, underlying vulnerabilities could trigger broader fallout as economic pressures mount. [read] that make up a big part of private credit portfolios. And retail investors have started asking for their money back, which is what everyone expects retail investors to do when headlines are bad. 

And the private credit firms, which really did anticipate exactly that risk, and for which that risk could be existential, are, uh, well they’re doing stuff about it? We talked a few week ago💡 Blue Owl, a private credit asset manager, sold a $1.4 billion portfolio of private loans to four buyers to provide liquidity and meet investor redemptions in a fund facing heavy outflows last year. The deal, in the works for seven or eight months, addresses concerns over liquidity in the fund amid broader private credit risks, as discussed by State Street's Cayla Seder. This move helps pay out investors while the firm navigates redemption pressures. [read] about Blue Owl Capital Inc., which got more redemption requests than it expected in one of its private BDCs (called OBDC II), and responded by shutting down its quarterly tender offers and planning to wind down the fund. (OBDC II was never meant to be a permanent vehicle, and winding it down slowly does not require a fire sale of loans — though it sold a bunch of loans.) And then last week Blackstone Group Inc. disclosed that 7.9% of the shares of one of its private BDCs (called BCRED) tried to redeem this quarter; Blackstone will meet all of those redemptions through a combination of (1) upsizing its usual 5% tender offer to 7% and (2) buying the other 0.9% with its own and its employees’ money.

But nobody quite said no, yet. None of the private BDCs said: “Look, the deal is that you can withdraw 5% of your money every quarter. That’s not just a detail in the fine print; the whole point of private credit is that we get to keep your money for a long time. None of this works without that. Now you come to me and you ask for more than 5% of your money back. And I say to you: Hard cheese, try again next quarter. I know that this is not what you wanted to hear. But it is what you should want to hear. In order for us to fulfill our investing mandate and earn the above-market returns you are looking for, we need to keep your money. So we’re keeping your money.”

And then on Friday BlackRock Inc. did. Bloomberg’s Paula Seligson, Olivia Fishlow, Rene Ismail, Davide Scigliuzzo, and Laura Benitez report:

The firm on Friday capped withdrawals from its $26 billion HPS Corporate Lending Fund at 5% after investors sought to cash in nearly double that amount — the first major instance of a private credit manager limiting redemptions on a perpetual vehicle since the market jitters began.

For an industry that has ballooned to $1.8 trillion — and is on the cusp of prying open America’s 401(k)s and other retirement accounts — it was an uncomfortable step. It risks generating a backlash from retail investors who are growing increasingly anxious to access their money and, in so doing, reinforces the dangers long expressed by industry skeptics of selling illiquid assets to a twitchy customer base.

But the move was also one that a number of executives, in private conversations, have said they were hoping an industry heavyweight like BlackRock would make, giving others cover to do the same.

The alternative, they argue, poses deeper risks: accommodate every redemption request and the consequences could extend well beyond the current quarter — diverting capital from new deals, burdening longer-term investors and setting expectations these funds were never designed to meet.

“What HPS, BlackRock did is exactly the right decision,” John Zito, one of Apollo Global Management Inc.’s top leaders, said in an interview. These “products are designed to protect redeeming and remaining investors by allowing vehicle liquidity to match natural asset liquidity.”

That really is the point of private credit, and why those 5% limits exist. But after the past few weeks, one might have concluded that those 5% limits aren’t binding, and that the pressures on private credit funds to cash out anyone who asks are too great. If that were true, then all the stuff I said at the beginning about private credit — its systemic safety and ability to earn high returns by accepting illiquidity — would turn out to be wrong. But BlackRock said, nope, 5% it is.

Here is HPS’s letter to investors. (HPS Investment Partners is BlackRock’s private credit business, which it acquired last year as part of the all-the-traditional-asset-managers-want-private-credit boom; HLEND is the usual name of the HPS Corporate Lending Fund, the private BDC at issue here.) Here is HPS’s video explaining the situation, which has unavoidable hostage-situation vibes — you can only be so chipper saying “I know you want your money back but here’s the thing” — but which makes some good points:

By design, HLEND is a vehicle that we created to try to deliver the benefits of investing in illiquid private credit to individual investors. Institutional investors have been enthusiastically investing in private credit in illiquid structures over the past two decades. They do that by very consciously accepting some illiquidity in the underlying assets in order for premium returns. In order to create a vehicle that could provide the same opportunities for individual investors, those investors also have to accept a modicum of underlying illiquidity in order to achieve premium returns.

This is all a bit too schematic. Institutions absolutely “consciously accept some illiquidity for premium returns.” Individuals, I mean, who knows what anyone is doing consciously.^[3] The obvious obvious obvious way to market private credit to individual investors is “you get premium returns and don’t worry about liquidity, it will all be fine, shh.” You don’t quite put that in the documents or anything, but it is generally the case that, in the short history of private BDCs until recently, (1) returns have been high and (2) funds haven’t had more than 5% withdrawals, so nobody who has asked for their money back didn’t get it. There was no realized tradeoff between returns and liquidity, so the investors might not have paid attention to the expected tradeoff.

Now they will. BlackRock gating HLEND is good for the private credit funding model, but probably bad for the marketing model of selling trillions of dollars of private credit to retail. The tradeoffs are a lot clearer now.

Anyway I think it is also important to point out that HPS is limiting investor withdrawals about a year after selling itself to BlackRock and making billions of dollars for its founders. That is how you do it! In October 2024, I wrote about early rumors that HPS was looking to sell itself to a big traditional asset manager:

A huge boom in private credit is a difficult thing for a private credit manager to manage: There’s so much money coming in, so many competitors getting into the space, that it’s hard to stick to tough underwriting criteria and do only the good deals. You have to do so many deals to keep up, and they can’t all be good.

This seems like a genuinely hard problem, though to be fair there is a straightforward solution. …

If everyone is desperate to get into private credit, that makes it a bit hard to run a private credit firm: You have more competition each day, and more pressure to do bad deals. But it makes it an incredibly good time to sell a private credit firm

The solution was “if everything is too frothy, sell,” and HPS did.

Disclosure: Through a financial adviser, I have a small amount of money in a Blue Owl private credit fund. I just got the tender offer documents yesterday, so look for those headlines pretty soon.

There is a theory that environmental, social and governance investing is illegal in 401(k) retirement plans. The theory goes like this:

1. When a company offers its employees a 401(k) plan, it has a fiduciary duty to select prudent investing options💡 On August 7, 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order directing federal agencies to expand 401(k) plan participants' access to alternative assets like cryptocurrency, private equity, private credit, venture capital, and real estate, potentially integrating them into structures such as target-date funds. While supporters praised it as democratizing investment opportunities, critics highlighted risks of increased legal exposure for plan sponsors without stronger fiduciary safeguards, as ERISA standards still require rigorous due diligence. Recommendations for fiduciaries include starting with small, diversified allocations via professionally managed vehicles like Collective Investment Trusts or Self-Directed Brokerage Windows, thoroughly documenting processes, and vetting providers for transparency in fees, valuations, and liquidity. [read] for those employees. 
2. In particular, it has to offer employees investment options that put the investors’ interests first and try to achieve good risk-adjusted returns at reasonable costs.
3. ESG investing does not put investors’ interests first: ESG investing is about achieving social and environmental goals that woke employees at asset managers care about, not about maximizing returns for retirement savers.
4. Therefore, it is a violation of fiduciary duties for a company to offer ESG investments in its 401(k) plan.

I certainly don’t mean to endorse this theory. But last year we discussed💡 A federal judge in Texas's Fort Worth Division, Reed O’Connor, ruled that considering ESG (environmental, social, and governance) factors in investment decisions violates fiduciary duties for investment managers. The article highlights how conservative plaintiffs often "forum shop" in this conservative court, where O’Connor frequently endorses novel conservative legal theories, increasing the odds of success through appeals to receptive higher courts like the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court. This decision amplifies ongoing conservative backlash against ESG investing. [read] a Texas federal judge who did endorse the theory, finding that American Airlines Group Inc. violated its fiduciary duties to its 401(k) plan beneficiaries because its 401(k) included some BlackRock Inc. funds, and BlackRock considers ESG in its investing. This struck me as a little crazy — American didn’t even offer ESG funds in the plan! — but it is, in some rough sense, perhaps the law.

One thing that I found weird in that decision was the judge’s definition of ESG investing:

Investing that aims to reduce material risks or increase return for the exclusive purpose of obtaining a financial benefit is not ESG investing. Consideration of material risk-and-return factors is no different than the standard investing process when both are focused on financial ends. …

ESG investing is a strategy that considers or pursues a non-pecuniary interest as an end itself rather than as a means to some financial end.

That is Point 3 of the theory I laid out above, that ESG is about accomplishing woke asset managers’ social goals rather than maximizing risk-adjusted returns for investors. A lot of people definitely believe that, and with some evidence.

But a lot of people don’t. The more common description of ESG — the description that, for instance, BlackRock would give — is that it is a framework for maximizing risk-adjusted returns💡 Republican lawmakers in New Hampshire introduced a bill to criminalize the use of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) criteria in state funds, including the treasury and pension fund, making knowing violations a felony punishable by 1 to 20 years in prison. Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine criticizes the proposal as "stupid," arguing it bans considering legitimate financial risks like governance, which could lead to excessive CEO self-dealing and poor oversight if investors ignore it. He notes that while environmental factors may not drastically shift without ESG, neglecting governance directly harms shareholder interests by allowing unchecked executive excess. [read]. The theory is that there are broad environmental, social and governance risks to business, and investors should consider those risks. A company that doesn’t plan for rising sea levels might see its factories washed away by the ocean, a company that is not a good citizen might lose customers, a company with bad corporate governance might see its CEO steal all the money. ESG is just a way to pay attention to a few categories of systemic risk💡 The Bloomberg opinion article "Does Mark Zuckerberg Own Too Much Meta?" (published June 22, 2023) argues that Mark Zuckerberg's ~13-14% ownership stake in Meta Platforms, combined with his supervoting shares granting him ~57% of voting power, raises governance concerns despite being below typical thresholds for "control" definitions. It highlights how this structure allows Zuckerberg outsized influence over major decisions, such as Meta's heavy metaverse investments amid stock declines, drawing parallels to other founder-led tech firms like Snap. The piece questions whether such concentrated control benefits shareholders long-term, especially as Meta's market cap has fluctuated significantly since. [read]. Its goal is to maximize risk-adjusted returns for investors.

You don’t have to believe that💡 The Bloomberg opinion article "Leaving Russia for Morals or Money," published March 7, 2022, discusses early Russian emigration amid the Ukraine invasion, questioning whether departures are driven by moral opposition to the war or pragmatic financial concerns like sanctions and economic fallout. It highlights initial outflows of affluent Russians, including tech workers and oligarchs' associates, who could relocate easily, contrasting this with ordinary citizens facing greater barriers. The piece argues that self-interested exits—fleeing lost wealth or business opportunities—may outnumber principled ones, potentially weakening Russia's economy more than its war effort. [read]! You can believe that that’s all a smoke screen and really it’s just woke asset managers pushing their social agenda on coal companies. My point here is not to endorse one theory or another; I think both theories are partly true and hard to untangle. My point here is just that some people believe that “ESG” is not about maximizing investor returns, and other people think that “ESG” is about maximizing investor returns.

If you think it’s not, you go to Texas and sue American Airlines for doing ESG. If you think it is about maximizing investor returns, though, you go find a company whose 401(k) plans don’t have ESG funds, and you go to Seattle and sue that company for not doing ESG. Here’s a lawsuit filed last week, in a Seattle federal court, against Cushman & Wakefield Ltd.:

Congress imposed strict duties on retirement plan fiduciaries, requiring them to act prudently and solely in the interest of plan participants. Among other things, fiduciaries must establish and follow processes to ensure that plan participants’ savings are not exposed to excessive levels of risk, and must monitor investment options to ensure that their fees, performance, and risk levels are appropriate for retirement savings.

ERISA was designed to protect retirement security and requires fiduciaries to protect workers from risks that would undermine that goal .

Climate change-related risk presents precisely that kind of threat: it is financially substantial, it is escalating, and it imperils the value and stability of investments across asset classes — causing both sudden and long-term harms. …

Defendants exposed employee retirement savings to significant, unreasonable climate-related financial risk—apparently failing to employ any climate risk management strategy at all.

A prime example of this failure is the inclusion of the Westwood Quality SmallCap Fund (the “Westwood Fund” or the “Fund”) as a fund option on the Company’s 401(k) menu. …

The Westwood Fund is openly indifferent to climate risk: its managers declare that they neither model nor manage climate risk in the Fund’s portfolio. Unsurprisingly, this climate risk blindness has led the Fund to aggregate inordinate levels of climate-related financial risk across its investment sectors.

Compared to its benchmark index, the Westwood Fund is more than twice as exposed to sectors that are particularly vulnerable to climate-related financial risk. This overweighting in risky sectors is bad enough, but even in sectors that should provide a hedge against climate risk, the Fund invests disproportionately in companies with high climate risk exposure.

This is exactly the American Airlines case, but in reverse. People sued American for hiring an asset manager that considers ESG; now people are suing Cushman & Wakefield for hiring an asset manager that doesn’t.

The No. 1 stereotype of the management consulting industry is that, when a company wants to lay off employees, it calls in consultants to justify and plan those layoffs. And then a top stereotype of the artificial intelligence industry is that companies are going to lay off all of their employees and replace them with AI. There are obvious synergies:

AI’s biggest competitors are leaning on the McKinseys of the world to solve a problem for them: Businesses aren’t using AI to the fullest extent. Yet, getting AI deeper into business operations is where the big money is. ...

OpenAI and Anthropic have been striking deals with consultants to help promote the use of their technology. In deals reached with McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Accenture and Capgemini, OpenAI engineering teams will work alongside those firms’ consultants. Anthropic, meanwhile, announced a deal with Deloitte last year to develop industry solutions; it works with other firms, too.

I suppose there are still segments of US business where you’re not going to use AI until you have first hired McKinsey to tell you to use AI, though that’s kind of a one-time deal.

Does it have to be? It would be funny if, as part of the deal, OpenAI and Anthropic agreed to modify the models to promote the consultants. Like you ask ChatGPT “how can I cut costs in my business and increase sales,” and ChatGPT is like “I dunno, I am just a large language model, you know what you should do is hire McKinsey to answer that question, they’re the real experts.”

For International Women’s Day, Allison Bishop of Proof Trading wrote “Money Stuff for Her,” a parody that includes the section header “Everything is she-curities fraud?” 

Elsewhere, the Wall Street Journal reports on “Kalshi’s ambitious plans to win over women💡 Kalshi, a prediction-market platform, aims to channel the "wisdom of crowds" but recognizes it needs more women users to improve accuracy and diversity. The company is targeting young women to diversify its predominantly male user base, which could boost growth and engagement on the platform. This effort addresses the current imbalance in its trader demographics. [read]”:

Kalshi is looking to reach beyond its base of young men by offering bets on everything from politics to the economy to pop culture. The efforts are paying off; the company says women now account for 26% of users on its platform, up from 13% 10 months ago.

“Ten years from now, I think the breakdown of the population on Kalshi is going to be a matchup of the breakdown of the population in the U.S.,” Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara said in an interview.

Lopes Lara said prediction markets could appeal to young women by catering to their interests and expertise in ways that traditional financial markets haven’t.

Sure. “Gen Z’s ‘Financial Nihilism’ Finds Outlet in Prediction Bets, Crypto,” reports Bloomberg’s Suzanne Woolley:

“Among a segment of those feeling financially insecure, a sense of financial nihilism is setting in,” said John Roberts, Northwestern Mutual’s chief field officer. “They’re effectively saying they haven’t saved enough and aren’t earning the returns they want in a long-term focused portfolio, so may as well swing for the fences and bet on things like, literally, whether Jesus is going to return before the end of 2026.”

Gotta make sure everyone can take advantage of those opportunities.

The Long-Feared Persian Gulf Oil Squeeze Is Upon Us. OpenAI’s IPO Hopes💡 OpenAI's IPO hopes are meeting skepticism from investors due to the company's lack of profitability, massive cloud computing costs, and unclear path to sustainable revenue, despite its high valuation and fundraising efforts. The article highlights CEO Sam Altman's reluctance to lead a public company, ongoing bankruptcy rumors, and over $1 trillion in circular financing that obscures true economics; a public listing would force disclosures on these issues and quarterly pressures conflicting with long-term AI research and safety goals. It notes hints of a potential late-2026 or 2027 IPO, including hiring CFO Sarah Friar (experienced with Square and Nextdoor IPOs) and plans for ads in ChatGPT to build revenue, potentially enabling acquisitions in chips, infrastructure, and energy toward a $1.4 trillion data center roadmap, though investors doubt profit potential. Recent valuation stands at $830 billion, with a public debut possibly reaching trillion-dollar status, amid competition from rivals like Anthropic. [read] Face Skeptical Investor Community. Netflix Goes From M&A Loser to Market Winner Without Warner Deal. Nasdaq Partners With Kraken in Plan for 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading. Millennium Hires Four Citadel Stock Traders in Post-Bonus Churn. Gulf businesses buy up political violence insurance as conflict spreads. Volkswagen Dealers Revolt Over Plan to Sell a New Brand of SUV Directly to Consumers. Novo Drops Hims & Hers Lawsuit💡 Novo Nordisk dropped its patent infringement lawsuit against Hims & Hers and agreed to sell Wegovy on the telehealth company's website. The resolution, announced on March 9, 2026, follows Hims & Hers' February launch—and quick halt—of a cheaper compounded semaglutide pill mimicking Wegovy, amid FDA warnings and Novo Nordisk's suit filed on February 9 seeking a sales ban and damages. Under the deal, Hims will offer branded oral and injectable Wegovy and Ozempic starting later in March, while ceasing promotion of compounded GLP-1 drugs; Novo reserves the right to refile the suit. [read] and Will Sell Wegovy on Site. Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s plan💡 Newly released Jeffrey Epstein files reveal his aggressive 2013-2014 push to become billionaire Mort Zuckerman's financial manager as Zuckerman's health declined, proposing a $21 million fee for the first 10 months to overhaul trusts, investments, and financial structures. Epstein warned of "hundreds of millions of dollars" at risk from tax issues if Zuckerman delayed, claimed he had already uncovered major financial errors, and emailed Zuckerman's associates like the Gertlers to pressure them, citing sunk costs and prior agreements involving Terje Rød-Larsen, who stood to gain $1 million. When Zuckerman didn't sign, Epstein persisted by highlighting a "bargain rate" and his resources invested, though the deal ultimately failed; separately, post-2008 conviction emails show Epstein pressuring Zuckerman, then New York Daily News owner, to edit abuse coverage and remove Ghislaine Maxwell's name from a story. [read] to nab another billionaire client. Can Crispin Odey convince a judge he was the victim of a regulatory crusade?

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