JPMorgan Chase sees growth in Asia Pacific private credit market
SINGAPORE, June 5 (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N), opens new tab sees significant growth potential in Asia Pacific's private credit market, focusing on countries across Asia and including Australia and India, Serene Chen, the bank's Asia Pacific head of credit, currency, and emerging market sales, said on Thursday.
The U.S. bank has been actively building its private credit business in the region since 2019, targeting mid-sized companies without investment-grade ratings but with strong fundamentals, she said.
Globally, tariff uncertainty and market volatility have sent some companies to seek private credit as a flexible funding alternative to traditional lenders, benefiting the $2 trillion private credit industry, which has grown from $500 million over the past decade, according to analysts.
In February JPMorgan Chase announced that it would allocate another $50 billion for its direct lending push as the bank looks to expand its foothold in the rapidly growing private credit market.
"Asia is driving over 50% of the world GDP growth, and we have some of the biggest economies in the region," Chen said on Thursday.
"And our overall debt market in Asia, in public format, is only about $1.5 trillion and the GDP growth is strong, and in private credit, from the deal size we have seen, it's probably only about $200 billion every year or so for the last two years so has a large gap to catch up so we see it's still at the beginning stage of Asia private credit market," she added.
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