Instead, people like Ken Kencel — CEO of Churchill Asset Management, a private credit division of asset management giant Nuveen — held court. In the next decade, he predicted that private credit shops and direct lenders could fill in the holes in the asset-based lending space, as well as home and auto loans. Private credit — or alternative credit or direct lending — is a subsect of finance that has grown rapidly thanks to higher interest rates and distressed banks. Higher interest rates are forcing institutions — the pensions and endowments that make up hedge funds' biggest investors — to rethink their portfolios. But while the Bridgewater founder had the rapt attention of the room, it was at a direct lending panel a couple of hours later when an ambitious audience member pitched himself to the private credit executives onstage.

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Persons: Ray Dalio, Cliff Asness, Ken Kencel, —, I've, Banks, Gregory Robbins, Jan Van Eck Organizations: Greenwich Economic, Churchill Asset Management, Golub Capital, Bridgewater Locations: Greenwich, China