Eurazeo Co-CEO on Private Credit Risks

The divergence between European and American private credit markets is widening, offering a potential silver lining for institutional investors navigating an increasingly fragmented financial landscape. According to Eurazeo Co-CEO William Kadouch-Chassaing, European private credit platforms have successfully insulated themselves from the software sector concentration risks that have plagued their US counterparts—a distinction with significant implications for European entrepreneurs seeking exposure to African markets through debt instruments. Eurazeo's positioning is instructive. With private credit representing just 5% of their $70+ billion in assets under management, and with less than 9% of that credit exposure concentrated in software, the firm demonstrates a deliberately diversified approach that contrasts sharply with the American private credit boom. In the United States, the software sector's overrepresentation in private credit portfolios has become a structural vulnerability. As interest rates stabilized at higher levels than previously anticipated, and as growth narratives for high-burn-rate SaaS companies faced market skepticism, the concentration risk became acute—leading to elevated default probabilities and refinancing challenges that reverberated through the private credit ecosystem. Europe's more conservative positioning reflects both regulatory constraints and market maturity differences. The continent's stringent prudential frameworks, combined with a relatively later adoption of private credit as an asset class compared