From source to financial context
ACTA DIURNA reporting framework
The context
Four subsectors anchor coverage: middle-market direct lending; private asset-backed and specialty finance; distressed debt and special situations; and venture debt. Its five cross-cutting areas are leverage and coverage, defaults and amendments, fund financing, dry powder and deployment, and secondary or BDC valuations.
We treat alert levels such as low interest coverage or high leverage as screening assumptions, not calibrated default predictions. It also separates contractual payment-in-kind interest from a later switch away from cash interest, and a payment default from a covenant breach, amendment or distressed exchange.
What we track
Definitions and interpretation below describe our coverage. They are not live readings or mechanical buy/sell instructions.
Loan economics and structure
Reference-rate tenor and floor, spread, original-issue discount, fees, maturity, security and covenants.
How to read it: A one-off fee cannot simply be added to an annual coupon. Expected life and repayment assumptions affect fee yield and comparability across new loans and existing portfolios.
Source & methodology ↗Leverage and cash coverage
Debt relative to a defined earnings measure, cash interest coverage and free cash flow where disclosed.
How to read it: Credit-agreement EBITDA may contain add-backs. It is not cash flow; an early-stage loss-making business needs runway measures rather than a misleading debt-to-EBITDA ratio.
Source & methodology ↗Credit deterioration
Nonaccruals at cost and fair value, defaults, amendments, extensions, PIK elections and recoveries.
How to read it: Samples and denominators differ across lenders and indices. A BDC’s nonaccrual rate does not describe the entire market, and markdowns differ from realized losses.
Source & methodology ↗Asset-backed collateral
Vintage, eligibility, advance rates, delinquencies, losses, prepayments and excess spread for the actual collateral pool.
How to read it: Auto receivables, equipment and royalties have different repayment drivers. Public ABS can provide context but cannot be relabelled as observed private asset-backed finance.
Source & methodology ↗Fund financing and liquidity
NAV, subscription, warehouse and asset-level borrowing; commitments, drawn amounts and repurchase terms.
How to read it: Debt can occur at several layers. Avoid double-counting and examine recourse, collateral concentration, covenants and whether distributions were financed rather than realized.
Source & methodology ↗Deployment and secondary valuations
Fundraising, uncalled commitments, investment pace, executed secondary prices and listed BDC price relative to NAV.
How to read it: Dry powder is not necessarily cash ready for immediate investment. A discount to a lagged NAV can reflect fees, leverage, uncertainty or sentiment as well as asset value.
Source & methodology ↗How we cover it
Direct lending coverage includes sponsor and non-sponsor borrowers. Venture debt adds burn, runway, follow-on equity and warrant terms. Distress coverage follows restructuring, debtor-in-possession financing and recoveries.
Fund analysis preserves strategy, geography, vintage, gross or net performance and reporting dates. A quoted secondary bid, an executed transaction and a manager’s quarterly mark are separate observations.
What the numbers can miss
Private disclosure is incomplete and often delayed. Missing loan tapes, contracts or licensed benchmarks remain explicit gaps rather than reconstructed “market” figures.
Loan illiquidity and investor liquidity promises can diverge. Valuation stability may reflect infrequent marks and should not be confused with the absence of economic risk.
Sources & editorial context
This guide follows the actual private-credit/NBFI chat. Its source register supports selected subsectors rather than a claim of comprehensive observation of every non-bank institution.
- SEC — Search filings
- FINRA — Fixed income data
- FSB — Non-bank financial intermediation
- ILPA — Industry guidance and reporting standards
- Federal Reserve — Financial stability
Coverage framework informed by the publisher’s Private Credit and Non-Banking Financial Intermediation (NBFI) reference discussion. Discussions guide the reporting agenda; factual claims and metrics are checked against the identified source institutions.