Ken Griffin warns wealthy retail does not understand private credit
Source · Private Credit desk
— Summary
Ken Griffin — founder of $67bn hedge fund Citadel and trading firm Citadel Securities — has questioned whether wealthy individuals understand the risks of private credit, warning they could struggle to pull their money out in a downturn. His comments, made in an FT interview, add to growing concern about the sector’s rapid expansion into retail.
The private-credit industry — investment funds that lend directly to private-equity-owned companies, largely replacing banks pushed back by stricter regulation — has grown to more than $3.5tn in assets, according to the Alternative Investment Management Association. Funds aimed at wealthy individuals are among the fastest-growing pockets, with Blackstone, Apollo, KKR and Ares all targeting the channel. “Semi-liquid” structures allow investors to redeem only periodically. Griffin sums up the risk: “the liquidity mismatch between the retail investor and the duration of the investments.” Cracks are showing — Blue Owl Capital has limited withdrawals from its two flagship funds amid billions of redemption requests and concerns over exposure to AI-vulnerable software firms. Wealthy investors tried to pull more than $20bn in Q1 2025 alone; just over half got through.
JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon told Norges Bank Investment Management in Oslo on the same day that with more than 1,000 private-credit firms operating, weak underwriting standards mean the next credit cycle “will be worse than people think”. Goldman Sachs president John Waldron has separately warned some firms have “not marketed their product as clearly” as he would like. Source: Financial Times, 29 April 2026, Harriet Agnew and Robin Wigglesworth.
Key numbers
Metric
Value
Global private-credit AUM (AIMA)
>$3.5tn
Active firms (Dimon’s figure)
>1,000
Q1 2025 wealthy-investor redemption requests
>$20bn
Share honoured
just over half
Why it matters
Private credit — funds that lend directly to private-equity-owned companies, replacing banks pushed back by regulation — has grown to >$3.5tn. The retail/wealth channel is the fastest-growing sub-segment, with Blackstone, Apollo, KKR and Ares all aggressively targeting it via “semi-liquid” structures that allow only periodic redemptions.
Griffin’s diagnosis: a liquidity mismatch. Retail investors are used to instant liquidity in their other holdings; private-credit fund duration is multi-year. When stress hits, gates close — Blue Owl already showed how, limiting withdrawals from its two flagship funds amid billions in redemption requests and fears over AI-disrupted software borrowers.
Dimon, on the same day in Oslo: with more than 1,000 private-credit firms, “not all 1,000 of them are brilliant”; weak underwriting standards mean the next credit cycle “will be worse than people think”. Waldron, separately: some firms haven’t marketed their products with enough clarity about illiquidity.
Takeaway
Three of finance’s biggest names sounding the same alarm in the same week is a marker of the cycle. Watch BDC discounts and gating headlines as leading indicators of stress. For long-term holders of alternative-asset managers, the retail channel that powered fee growth is also the most exposed when redemptions accelerate.
— Delfineo's Take
Three of the highest-profile names in finance — Griffin, Dimon, Waldron — flagging the same risk in the same week is a marker of the cycle. For Delfineo’s portfolio thinking on alternative asset managers (Blackstone, Apollo, KKR, Ares, Tikehau, Eurazeo): the retail wealth channel that drove fee growth over the last five years is the same channel most exposed when redemptions hit in earnest. Watch BDC discounts and gating headlines as the leading indicator.