Ares Management Corp. 高管警告称，由于澳大利亚私人信贷行业对该国陷入困境的房地产市场敞口较大，利率上升可能进一步加大该行业压力。
Elevated interest rates threaten to add further pressure on Australia’s private credit sector given its weighting to the country’s struggling real estate market, an Ares Management Corp. executive has warned.
澳大利亚央行今年已四次加息至4.6%，并暗示可能进一步收紧货币政策以应对通胀。借贷成本上升给该国私人债务市场带来额外负担。Ares 亚洲直接贷款业务负责人兼合伙人彼得·格拉夫（Peter Graf）在周二于悉尼举行的花旗澳大利亚及新西兰投资会议上表示，Ares 是全球最大的私人信贷管理公司之一。
Australia’s central bank has raised interest rates four times to 4.6% this year and signaled further tightening may come as it combats inflation. The higher borrowing costs add an extra burden on the country’s private debt market, Peter Graf, partner and head of Asia direct lending at Ares, one of the world’s largest private credit managers, said during the Citi Australia & New Zealand Investment Conference in Sydney on Tuesday.
“目前利率可能为4.6%，如果这一水平维持不变，显然会对整个房地产行业造成更大压力，”格拉夫说。“因此，你必须密切关注你承保的内容、这些企业的运营情况，以及坦率地说，你最终将如何与这些借款人合作，”他补充道。
“Interest rates being probably 4.6% today, if that stays, that’s obviously going to be tougher on the real estate sector as a whole,” Graf said. “So you’ve got to watch super closely in terms of what you’re underwriting, how those businesses are going, and then to be honest, how you end up working with those borrowers,” he added.
私人信贷基金管理者通常采用浮动利率结构发放贷款，因此当基准利率上升时，借款人需支付的利息也会随之增加。这在利率上升时期可为投资者带来可观收益，但也可能因债务偿还负担加大而增加违约风险。
Private credit fund managers typically structure loans on a floating rate basis, so the interest paid by the borrower rises when underlying benchmark rates increase. This can deliver attractive yields for investors as rates rise, but may also increase the risk of default, given the higher burden to service the debt.
在澳大利亚房地产市场持续低迷的背景下，该国私人信贷市场规模达2000亿澳元（约1400亿美元），对房地产的敞口较大，因此向房地产开发商放贷的风险可能尤为突出。持续的通胀和利率上升推高了建筑和借贷成本，与此同时房价正在下跌。
The dynamic may be acute in lending to property developers given Australia’s heavy weighting to real estate across the A$200 billion ($140 billion) private credit market during the current real estate downturn. Persistent inflation and higher rates have increased construction and borrowing costs, while home prices are falling.
格拉夫表示，针对房地产的私人信贷基金需要“非常仔细地审视其底层资产”。“裂纹或压力可能会更明显地显现出来，”他说。
For private credit funds targeting real estate, “underlying assets needs to be looked at very closely,” Graf said. “Cracks or stress is probably going to come through more,” he said.
尽管行业面临压力，但格拉夫并不预见更广泛的系统性信贷紧缩，这一观点也得到了贝莱德信贷与保险部亚太私募信贷策略负责人马克·格伦加里的认同，他也在活动期间发表了讲话。
Despite the pressure facing the sector, Graf does not anticipate a broader systemic credit squeeze, a sentiment shared by Mark Glengarry, head of APAC Private Credit Strategies for Blackstone Credit and Insurance, who also spoke during the event.
“压力实际上是件好事，它能让人们理解分散性，管理表现和资产类别内部的差异化，”格伦加里说。
“Stress is is a good thing to actually allow people to understand dispersion and manage your performance and differentiation within the asset class,” Glengarry said.
这些言论是在一段动荡时期之后发表的，这段时期包括悉尼开发商巴斯拉集团在8月因主要欠私募债务基金约34亿澳元而陷入破产。多家私募信贷基金已限制投资者赎回，而企业监管机构也将目光投向了该行业。包括高盛集团公司和瑞银在内的主要贷款机构也在对其向澳大利亚私募信贷基金提供的专项融资变得更加挑剔，引发了人们对该行业可能面临流动性限制的担忧。
The comments follow a period of turmoil that has included Sydney developer Bathla Group falling into insolvency in August owing around A$3.4 billion mainly to private debt funds. Multiple private credit funds have gated investor redemptions, while the corporate regulator has also targeted the sector. Major lenders including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and UBS have also become more selective in the specialist financing they provide to private credit funds in Australia, raising concerns the sector may face liquidity constraints.
提到巴斯拉集团时，格拉夫表示，它“是一个相当复杂的结构，涉及多家不同的贷款机构和多种不同的资产”，但若这些贷款机构对其承销的资产进行了尽职调查，那么它们很可能会没事。他表示，六个月前定价在8%-9%的房地产优先贷款，“如今在市场上可能为11%至12%”，他说。
Referring to Bathla Group, Graf said it was “quite a complicated structure with a number of different lenders and the number of different assets,” but that a number of lenders would likely be fine if they’d done their due diligence on the assets they underwrote. He said real estate senior loans that priced at 8%-9% six months ago, “today in the market may be 11 to 12%,” he said.
“也许有些项目获得了原本不会获得的融资，但这些问题将会得到解决，”格伦加里说。“我认为人们会从那里继续前进。”在会议的另一个小组讨论上，澳大利亚最大的养老基金之一表示，它与精选的少数建筑商合作进行建设融资。
“You have maybe some projects which have been funded which wouldn’t otherwise be funded, but those those will be worked through,” Glengarry said. “And I think people will move on from that.”Speaking on a separate panel at the conference, one of Australia’s largest pension funds said it worked with a select number of builders to do construction financing.
“我们没有改变我们的信贷承销方式，”CBUS超级养老金直接债务和非流动性信贷负责人安妮·莫阿尔说。“不幸的是，我们现在做得更少了，而且我们发现很难找到机会。”
“We haven’t changed the way we are underwriting credit,” said Anne Moal, head of direct debt and illiquid credit at Cbus Super. “We do less of it, unfortunately, and we have found very hard to find opportunities.”