Stress in the banking system—starting with the collapse of its three high flyers (Silvergate, Signature, and Silicon Valley Bank) and continuing with the rescue of Credit Suisse, one of Europe’s largest and oldest banks—has rocked the venture capital world and upended public equity and fixed income markets more broadly. Conspicuously absent from the headlines has been private equity. If anything, PE has been business as usual. In the same seven-day span that saw SVB bank accounts and loan facilities freeze momentarily for sponsor-backed companies and funds, private equity announced five megabuyouts worth $31.3 billion in aggregate, including the year’s largest so far, Qualtrics’ take-private at $12.5 billion. Clearly, PE dealmakers were undisturbed by the events that preceded and followed the SVB meltdown.

This has left industry observers to wonder whether PE might emerge unscathed and perhaps even a winner longer term, or conversely, if more fallout is around the corner with some type of PE-related shoe ready to drop.

It’s no secret that private equity has had its sights set on stealing the thunder from public markets and traditional capital formation for some time now. Since 2016, through all of the booms and busts in IPOs, SPACs, secondary offerings, and other forms of public underwriting, more equity capital has been raised from private markets than public markets.

That phenomenon has expanded to parts of debt capital markets and lending as well. For almost one year now, private credit funds have stepped in to fill the growing void left by public markets for private borrowers, or the so-called broadly syndicated loan (BSL) market, a bank-led activity.

According to LCD estimates, new-issue volume for leveraged loans provided by private funds in 2022 nearly equaled BSL institutional volume, at $200.0 billion and $225.1 billion, respectively. That compares to $155.9 billion for private funds and $614.6 billion for the BSL market in 2021.

But private equity’s vision does not stop there. With this latest push into credit, the industry has its eye on a broad range of new strategies to supplement the $1.3 trillion it has under management in private debt funds and close the gap to the $4.4 trillion it is managing in private equity funds.

Apollo CEO Marc Rowan sums up the industry’s ambitions best in reference to the $40 trillion replacement market for investment-grade fixed-income returns: “The opportunity