TSL Express Daily News

Professor Emeritus and Past President of the American Finance Association teams up with Cerebro Capital to uncover the hidden drivers moving credit markets for private corporate loans.    

Cerebro Capital, a commercial loan marketplace platform, today announced a partnership with Ken Singleton, Adams Distinguished Professor of Management at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Together, Cerebro and Singleton will study activity on the middle market and create analysis and content to help both borrowers and lenders better understand movements and drivers within the credit market.

The credit market for private middle market US companies is nearly $3 trillion comprised of loans from commercial bank and non-bank lending institutions. These loans are used for a broad range of financing purposes from working capital and acquisitions to equipment and owner-occupied real estate. Unlike the consumer mortgage industry, information on loan terms and underwriting requirements is difficult to source because the borrowers are mostly private corporations. Research will be focused on comparing, contrasting, and understanding bank and non-bank lending institution behavior. Specifically, analysis will be conducted on how market changes impact interest rates, loan structure, lender risk appetite, and other variables affecting corporate borrowers' ability to access and benefit from the credit markets.

"We're thrilled to partner with Ken Singleton to deepen our analysis of the credit markets," said Matt Bjonerud, Founder and CEO of Cerebro Capital. "Ken will be critical to helping Cerebro better define, predict, and understand the market activity including loan terms and risk appetites that we're seeing across both bank and non-bank lenders."

Cerebro Capital was started in 2017 to help middle-market companies navigate the opaque corporate loan markets. Cerebro has grown rapidly with thousands of borrowers using its platform to request credit facilities from over 800 lending institutions. Prior to Cerebro, companies were reliant on individual lenders, often biased to their own firm, to educate them on market loan terms for their business. Now with more accessible data on loan terms and lending trends, the activity on Cerebro's loan marketplace provides an important window into the part of capital markets that was previously opaque.

"I'm excited to work with Cerebro to analyze difficult to access market data on the private credit markets," said Ken Singleton. "Cerebro is uniquely positioned to provide insights from both middle-market borrowers and the lenders that serve them, including both commercial banks and non-bank lenders."

Cerebro currently publishes a quarterly survey of non-bank lenders, as a companion survey to the Federal Reserve's Senior Loan Officer survey. Additionally, Cerebro publishes thought leadership about middle-market lending, providing current trends and analysis for both borrowers and lenders. Currently Cerebro's lender network contains over 400 alternative lenders and over 400 commercial banks.

Kenneth Singleton is the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He has published widely on financial risks and their impacts on economic decision-making, including books on credit risk and dynamic asset pricing. He is a Fellow of the American Finance Association, served as Executive Editor of the Journal of Finance, and his professional awards include the Frisch Medal (Econometrica) and the Stephen A. Ross Prize in Financial Economics. He is an advisor to Stanford Angels and Entrepreneurs, serves on the investment committee of the Stanford GSB Impact, and is co-founder of the nonprofit 1 Grain to 1000 Grains. Ken holds a BA in Mathematics from Reed College and a PhD in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

About Cerebro Capital: Powered by over 800 commercial bank and non-bank lending institutions, Cerebro Capital ("Cerebro") is a data-driven platform purposefully designed to democratize access to credit markets by connecting corporate borrowers and lenders to find and close corporate loans ranging from $2 million to $100 million. Working with finance and technology experts, Cerebro has created a holistic corporate loan management solution designed to revolutionize the way borrowers, lenders, intermediaries, and stakeholders manage corporate debt. To learn more about Cerebro, please visit, https://www.cerebrocapital.com/.