Jennifer: So if you take a step back, what’s really going on in private credit right now is natural late stage in the cycle dispersion. Some of the recent wobbles or cracks are in our view, really evidence of dropped underwriting standards or potentially lax diligence by some. The types of things that you see when you have overreaching later in the cycle. Now, obviously at Oaktree, we’ve been investing through credit cycles for over 30 years. So we don’t believe that this is systemic, and in our view now, that discipline and diligence in underwriting, and then specifically for us in asset-backed, that critical evaluation of who you are working with and spotting bad actors, remember we’re lending to the lenders, is more important than ever.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces Podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Jennifer Marquez at Oaktree Capital Management LP, based in Los Angeles. She started her career as a lawyer, Welcome, Jennifer. Thanks for joining me today.
Jennifer: Thanks, Ethan. It’s great to be with you here today, and thank you for having me on the show.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, we, we don’t have the video on for our audio listeners, but you are sitting there in lovely Los Angeles with sun streaming through your window at 8 o’clock in the morning. So I’d love to know how you ended up in Los Angeles, how you ended up in finance. Take us through from the beginning if you could.
Jennifer: Now, for those listeners that may be less familiar with Oaktree, we are a 30-year vintage global asset manager with a particular focus on performing and opportunistic credit investing. We’ve actually been investing in asset-backed finance and traded structured credit for decades, but the genesis for the launch of our dedicated asset-backed finance platform at the start of 2024 was the emergence of what we believe to be a significant private performing credit version of the opportunity. As some listeners may be aware, in 2019, we signed our original partnership with Brookfield, and later this year, we will become fully part of the Brookfield group. Together, we represent almost $350 billion in credit assets under management. And with our other capabilities in real estate, in infrastructure, and in private equity, we’re really able to offer our clients the full breadth of investment solutions. So it’s an exciting time for both of our platforms. So with that context, to answer your question, I did have a less traditional route into finance. After studying law at Oxford, I went to train and then practiced at the London office of US law firm Cleary Gottlieb Zinn Hamilton. I had a broad transactional practice that covered tax and private fund structuring. And I also then spent some time at Goldman Sachs advising on the structuring of transactions for the merchant banking group and the European special situations group. So when I joined Oaktree, which is almost a decade ago now, it was originally in that same transactional structuring capacity. Put simply, I helped make sure the investments we did across our performing and opportunistic credit platform were structured in the most efficient way from a tax and regulatory perspective. And I also worked on a lot of our new business ventures. So things like the structuring of our first European CLO equity fund, for example, or solutions to enable our opportunistic credit platform to do its first investments in India. Over time, I took on more responsibility and eventually relocated from our London office to our headquarters here in Los Angeles and to the sunshine. And took over leadership of our global structuring group. And it was a great role, and I got to work across the breadth of our business, but I always had a yearning to be closer to the commercial side of things. And so when our portfolio manager for structured credit, Brendan Beer, was looking for help in building out our asset-backed finance business, it was an easy decision for me to say yes and to make that internal move.
Aoifinn Devitt: It seems to me that there are quite a few former lawyers in the structured finance business side of things, the investing side of things. What is it about the legal training you’ve had that maybe makes this a suitable area? And what do you bring from that legal training, plus the time and practice?
Jennifer: Yeah, I think that critical legal lens is a very valuable asset in credit investing, particularly in structured credit investing in the area that I specialize in. And then more broadly at Oaktree, I think there’s a deep respect for that type of thinking, with many of our senior leadership actually having started out their careers as lawyers also. So Bruce Karsh, one of our founding partners, is legally qualified, for example, and a lot of the roots of our distressed credit business were indeed built around that deep understanding of the bankruptcy and restructuring laws in the US. Our co-CEO, Armen Panosyan, who has, among various different qualifications, a law degree. So I think it’s woven into the fabric of our firm to think like that. And in a sense, we talk about credit as a negative art. You are really evaluated by the bad credits you avoid that would otherwise harm your performance. And so the first question we ask on any investment that we’re evaluating is, how could we lose money on this? And so I think that focus on downside protection, on covenants in the documents, on enforcement scenarios is an exercise that I think legal training in particular places you very well for. And then specifically for what I do for our structured credit business, from a business strategy perspective, our industry is evolving so rapidly. So whether that be how we can offer semi-liquid solutions to wealth and retail investors, or how we can offer private market solutions within 401(k)s, or how we can just bring our platform to our global investors in a variety of different jurisdictions, an ability to digest the web of regulations and laws that govern these areas has been invaluable to me. And I think we want to be at the forefront of solving complexity for our clients. And again, legal training is a very good background for that.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that’s a perfect segue into my next topic, which was around the evolution of these areas you focus on, structured finance, asset-backed financing. And can you take us through a little bit of that evolution? Because obviously this area was very much in focus during GFC, the financial crisis. It seems to have matured, changed its stripes in some way. Evolved since then? Perhaps what are the characteristics that are different from then? If you could tell us a little bit about the snapshot of these strategies today.
Jennifer: Absolutely. So I like to start, if listeners will indulge me, in a little explainer of how we define asset-backed finance, since I think everyone thinks about it a bit differently. So in essence, asset-backed finance can be simplified to the business of lending to lenders. Every time a bank or a specialty finance company issues a credit card or a mortgage, writes an equipment lease, they are originating an asset. That’s the asset in asset-backed finance. So if origination is the business of extending credit or making a loan, then asset-backed finance is the business of funding those loans or where the money comes from. Now, as you said, banks have been financing the breadth of the global economy with these financing structures for decades. So what’s new today is not so much the asset class, there’s been decades of dependable data in the different sectors that we’re financing here, but rather the changing role of banks. So banks in response to various different headwinds, fiscal tightening, concerns about the reliability of deposits, balance sheet valuation concerns, have been significantly reducing their footprint in asset-backed finance and have generally refocused their activities on fee and deposit generative businesses. And so that’s giving rise to a really interesting opportunity for private alternative lenders such as Oaktree, who have the necessary expertise to step in and fill that financing void. You know, Oaktree, we like to talk a lot about cycles, and right now in asset-backed finance, we’re in a similar place to where we were with corporate credit over a decade ago, when you saw that first wave of bank retrenchment and private credit was able to really step in and provide an alternative solution. So that’s on the supply side. You just have a dearth of capital providers that are able to fully finance the breadth of the ABF need. And then on the demand side, you’ve seen a growing trend of companies wanting to move towards balance sheet light financing structures, and also a growth in areas of commerce and industry that really naturally lend themselves to securitization financing. So things like digital infrastructure, fiber to the premises technology, for example, or power necessary to fuel data centers catering to the AI need. So we just have very favorable supply and demand dynamics in asset-backed finance right now, and that means not only can we command a healthy spread premium compared to other areas within private credit, but that we’re also able to really be in the driving seat in obtaining robust creditor protections that we demand on behalf of our clients. So again, to go back to that focus on downside protection, that’s a core of everything that we do at Oaktree, this is a very interesting space for us. And then I agree that the market has matured post the global financial crisis. And if you look at what really happened there, that was a situation not just of structural concern, but also fundamentally asset concern. The underlying subprime mortgages being securitized were fundamentally bad assets. And so a strict evaluation of asset quality in our view is as important today as it was back then. And that’s why you need both the structuring expertise, but also the deep sector expertise to be able to navigate this market well.
Aoifinn Devitt: And in terms of some of the current market conditions in the last, say, 6 months, there’s been some isolated incidents of maybe cracks in the private credit edifice, suggestions of perhaps some pain that was not yet systemic but was rising. From your vantage point, when you look at the default environment, and we’re recording this in February 2026, maybe within structured finance in particular, what do you see there in terms of evidence of default or some of the safeguards?
Jennifer: Yeah, so taking a step back, I mean, over the last decade, private credit has evolved into an important pillar of how we grow and provide fuel for our global economy. It’s now a permanent feature in our financial system, providing flexible capital solutions to grow and sustain businesses is the reason that the private credit markets have boomed. And although we have seen some well-documented recent defaults, I think the overall experience in private credit has still been strong current income and relatively low losses. Now in ABF, we are earlier in the cycle, as I said, and the opportunity set is actually much, much broader than the corporate credit opportunity in the terms of the market size. And our market opportunity is also generally not dependent on M&A volumes or base rates. I like to say colloquially, we’re financing I’m addressing Main Street, not Wall Street here. So periods of market volatility can actually be opportunities for us as the public securitization markets often slow down, creating a need for more flexible private alternative solutions. So we saw that in April last year, for example, in the immediate aftermath of the tariff announcements, we saw both a slight widening in the pricing we could achieve in private asset-backed finance, but also just more inbound calls for our capital. And so of course we have a constant eye on the macro backdrop as our investments are not immune from risks, but the diversity of the opportunity set means that we should be able to, in asset-backed finance, remain consistently invested, consistently deploy at scale, and consistently find pockets of relative value throughout market cycles. And then in the terms of how we think about downside protection and risk of loss in our asset class, So structured finance is, as the name may suggest, a highly structured asset class. We have the benefit of the use of various different tools within the way we structure our investments to actually provide significant cushion from any potential non-performance in the underlying pool of assets that we’re financing. So loss in structured finance is not as much as a binary receive payment, do not receive payment, as you might have in other areas of private credit. And obviously we think very deeply about the originators that we want to partner with. And again, a lot of the recent well-documented situations have been, in our view, as such cases of— I like to simplify everything that we do in our credit analysis of a case of good assets. What is the probability of performance in the assets that we’re financing then? And then good originator. On the other hand, what is the originator’s business? How are they motivated? How do they make and lose money? And are they a company that we want to partner with? Do we feel aligned with their own origination practices? And so our analysis is twofold, and I think protecting against downside risks requires you to think both of the quantitative analysis and also that more nuanced qualitative analysis of who you want to work with.
Aoifinn Devitt: We’re going to take a quick break to hear from one of the sponsors of this series, Benefit Street Partners, BSP. I sat down with Rich Byrne, President and CEO of BSP, and asked him about the importance of hiring for cognitive diversity within the firm. I think it’s great when people have varied interests. It’s just not that interesting to see somebody who was a business undergraduate and business school graduate major and then went into investment banking and, you know, sometimes become somewhat one-dimensional. And remember, everything we do probably in the entire work world, but certainly in the Wall Street workspace, is there’s a sales component. You’re interacting with other people, whether they’re clients or your internal constituents. I just think it makes you more relatable, more human, more interesting to have varied interests. Now, back to the show. And speaking of working with, you mentioned the evolution of your product range and the clients and how their needs are evolving, whether it be in the private wealth arena, semi-liquid products. Where are we exactly now in terms of that evolution, would you say, in terms of the— do you see more of this on the horizon?
Jennifer: Yeah, so at Oaktree, we have a broad client base, and that includes many large institutions and a significant wealth and retail client base as well. Looking looking at asset-backed finance in particular, asset-backed finance is a good complement to or diversifier from corporate credit exposure that clients may have in their portfolio. Our assets tend to be a little shorter duration, are often self-amortizing, meaning that you get both interest and regular principal repayments. And then given the breadth of what we’re financing, a potentially less correlated return than other private and public credit markets may produce. And then, as I said, given this favorable supply and demand dynamics, our focus on the core area of private asset-backed finance is also available at a premium today. So it’s an attractive yield opportunity. So with all that background, I think that our wealth clients, for example, that may have corporate credit investments in BDCs are seeing asset-backed finance as an interesting opportunity now to complement that corporate credit position that they might have in a BDC. And equally, we see the same with our institutional client base. And so I think that we will see significant uptake for this product in the wealth and the retail market. And then the other thing I would say is they obviously have key focus in serving that segment of the market into liquidity. And the cash profile of our asset class is such that, as I said, our investments are often self-amortizing or self-liquidating, which means our asset class, I think, fits particularly well for clients that want a semi-liquid solution. And we compare private asset-backed finance, for example, with a liquid traded structured credit sleeve to provide a solution to those clients that do have liquidity needs. So I see this asset class as serving both our institutional and our wealth clients very well. The European market is still a little bit more heavily banked than the US, and we’re seeing such, you know, a lot to do in the US, but we think it’s really important to be able to provide clients with a diversified global portfolio, and that will be a key part of our offering.
Aoifinn Devitt: So we recorded our podcast in early February 2026, and much has occurred since then, including in particular a SaaS apocalypse as investors grew concerned about rapid AI advances that could potentially threaten SaaS companies. Private credit has equally come under the microscope for its exposures there. I sat down again with Jennifer Marquez to discuss how this current, the recent developments in the credit arena how Oaktree has been responding.
Jennifer: Thanks for having me again, Ethan. So look, if you take a step back, what’s really going on in private credit right now is natural late stage in the cycle dispersion. Some of the recent wobbles or cracks are in our view, really evidence of dropped underwriting standards or potentially lax diligence by some. The types of things that you see when you have overreaching later in the cycle. Now, obviously at Oaktree, we’ve been investing through credit cycles for over 30 30 years. So we don’t believe that this is systemic. And in our view now, that discipline and diligence in underwriting, and then specifically for us in asset-backed, that critical evaluation of who you are working with and spotting bad actors— remember, we’re lending to the lenders— is more important than ever. We’re ultimately in a transition period where private credit is moving from a rate-driven environment to a credit-driven one. And that’s typically where manager discipline matters most, and it’s where experienced lenders tend to differentiate themselves. So I think at this point in the credit cycle, it’s natural to see some dispersion in results between different managers. And then on software specifically, I think you’ll also see dispersion. You’ll see managers with more or less credit exposure in their portfolios, and then winners and losers within software. Those that have deep moats, proprietary data, integration with systems, and the resources to invest in AI may through well on the other side. Moving though to asset-backed, what we are doing is quite different. This is real economy financing, equipment leasing, transportation, so potentially less exposed to broader AI disruption themes. And structurally, asset-backed finance is also very different to other forms of corporate private credit. That self-amortizing or self-liquidating feature I mentioned earlier, well, that means we are less exposed to valuation-based refinancing events to get repaid. And what’s really going on in software right now is, of course, a valuation question. So for those reasons, I think we’ll continue to see asset-backed finance as a good complement to, or diversifier from, a well-picked, well-diligenced corporate credit portfolio.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you for that. And I’d love to now move to some personal reflections. So we’ve spoken about your career journey, moving from law into finance and also moving geographies. Were there any highs and lows throughout that time? And maybe in case of the lows, any particular lessons learned?
Jennifer: Yes, so there have been many highs. I am fortunate to love what I do, and I get to work with amazing people on really interesting transactions. I get to travel the world meeting our global client base, and I’ve had the opportunity obviously to, to move to and to live and work in the US. I think the things that I’m most proud of, the real highs for me if I look back over the course of my career, is is where teams that I’ve helped build have won as a team. And so obviously, most recently, the build-out of our asset-backed finance business has been a key high. But, you know, many times, you know, looking at situations where the teams that I’ve led have outperformed or overdelivered or exceeded expectations in some way has been a very proud moment for me. And then more generally, I’m an optimist, so I like to focus on the positives. You know, reflecting lows have included times that we’ve made mistakes that could have been avoided, or when a perspective not listened to as closely turns out to be very valuable, for example. I think it’s very important to listen as a leader, and I also think that cognitive diversity and decision-making is very important.
Aoifinn Devitt: And then outside the professional domain, on a personal level, were there any setbacks or challenges in that domain that you’ve learned lessons from and maybe internalized and maybe even brought into the workplace?
Jennifer: So I did experience a big personal challenge last year. On January 7th, 2025, we lost our home and we lost all of our belongings in the LA wildfires. Our daughter’s school, many of our friends’ houses, and tragically, many other colleagues at Oaktree also lost everything. It was a very shocking experience and not one I ever expected to go through. There is a fellow mother at my daughter’s school who also sadly lost her home in the fires and who also happens to be the CEO of a large LA-headquartered asset manager. And she wrote a very powerful letter to their employees the day after the fires, which said, and I quote, “The only way forward is through.” And the piece of advice that I have consistently given to mentees over my career is that resilience is one of the most important career skills. There will be times when a pitch falls flat or an idea needs to be reworked, or there is a loss on an investment or a missed opportunity. And the ability to get back up, to rework, to learn, to improve, and to come back better, faster, and stronger is what I believe produces success us over the long term. And in those days, the immediate days after the fires, I realized that my own resilience was truly being tested. You know, we had a very busy period of fundraising and commitments that we’d made to clients and stakeholders to meet. And so I did the only thing I think there is to do, which is to continue through. I was obviously fortunate to have the support of many incredible people, including my amazing husband, who is my rock and also the biggest supporter of my career. But, you know, in that time I was so impressed by the resilience that I saw around me of my colleagues at Oaktree who never stopped serving our clients despite the fact that almost everybody in our LA office was evacuated, and then of my community and ultimately of the city itself. So I think LA has a lot to learn from the fires, but I learned a lot about my own resilience during that period. And as a result, I am that bit more proud of what our business achieved in 2025. As a result, I believe that if you approach any setback or challenge with that curiosity of what can I learn from this, what can I take from this, and ultimately what will make me stronger, that over the long term you will go further.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you for sharing that, and I’m so sorry that you did experience that. We had a guest some time ago, Tom Soto, who not only, he did not lose his own house, but the way he, he took his energy and put it into rebuilding his son’s school, ensuring they could have temporary accommodation. It was a remarkable example of people and responses at their best. Just my last question on that tragic event is, is just to, to ask, how do you see the world differently now? I think I mentioned in our pre-meeting, I had experienced a bus accident in my, you know, at age 11. And I certainly treated life a little differently when I came out of that experience knowing that, you know, how close I had come perhaps to a different outcome. And I would imagine in your case there is a material goods, I suppose, that have been damaged, heirlooms, but equally no lives lost, thank goodness. Did you, do you have a different just lens, I suppose, after that?
Jennifer: I mean, I do think it makes you focus on what truly matters. We were very fortunate we weren’t actually in the country at the time, so We never were at risk. Our family weren’t at risk physically.
Aoifinn Devitt: We were—
Jennifer: everybody was safe. Everybody was fine. And I think that, that, you know, you’re incredibly grateful for that. And it really does make you focus on your support system, your family, your friends, and what they mean to you. And again, that sense of community rising together through difficulties and supporting each other, I think is very powerful. And that was the thing that really shone for me in those weeks and months afterwards, just how much everybody, you know, obviously at Oaktree, because we’re at our headquarters and it’s our home, but also more broadly in, in my professional and personal networks stood up around us. And I think that’s incredible to see.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s a nice link to my next question about key people. Usually this is a professional question around mentors or anybody that was instrumental in your career. And I know you’ve mentioned your husband and his support. And, and this does not have to be an exhaustive list, but any other names you’d like to, to call out in terms of people who are particularly influential for you?
Jennifer: So I’m fortunate to have had and still have many wonderful managers and mentors, you know, people at the top of their career who’ve given me their time and their great advice and their support and their sponsorship. Yeah, I won’t list all of their names, but if they’re listening, they know who they are and I thank them deeply. Early in my career, though, there were not as many women in senior leadership roles in our industry as you see today. And I remember there was one incredible partner at the law firm that I trained at, and I can give a name here as it’s, it’s a while back, Elizabeth Lennis. And she is an amazing lawyer. She’s charismatic. She was great with clients. And I think that early type of inspiration really makes you envisage what is possible at a very formative time. In your career where you’re starting to literally see how you could develop. And I truly believe that you cannot be what you cannot see. And so today I try and pay that forward to seek to empower women that I work with in our industry. And to, you know, if I can repay the help that I received in some small way, then that means a lot to me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, my last question is then around any advice that maybe you got within these mentorship circles or elsewhere any creed or motto that you live by and that can leave with us here?
Jennifer: I think don’t be afraid to take risks, to try new things, particularly early in your career. Get stuck in and help out with everyone and everything. Seek to provide solutions. Busy people, particularly busy important people with the ability to positively influence your career, love well-thought-out solutions. And then one that I still live by today is never let a good crisis go to waste. When all around are losing their heads, the ability to remain calm and to consider a potential upside in the problem, I think, is a superpower.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much, Jennifer. Throughout our conversation, your clear legal mind, your logic has come through from start to finish. It has been a very clear description of the opportunity set. In asset-backed financing and structured finance, of its evolution to address a growing market of high net worth investors that are seeking this diversification. And thank you for setting out so beautifully the power of community, the power of mentorship, and ultimately the importance of advocacy, self-advocacy, and that risk-taking that you mentioned. Thank you for coming here and sharing your insights with us.
Jennifer: Thank you, Yvonne. I appreciate it.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces Podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors and their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer: So if you take a step back, what’s really going on in private credit right now is natural late stage in the cycle dispersion. Some of the recent wobbles or cracks are in our view, really evidence of dropped underwriting standards or potentially lax diligence by some. The types of things that you see when you have overreaching later in the cycle. Now, obviously at Oaktree, we’ve been investing through credit cycles for over 30 years. So we don’t believe that this is systemic, and in our view now, that discipline and diligence in underwriting, and then specifically for us in asset-backed, that critical evaluation of who you are working with and spotting bad actors, remember we’re lending to the lenders, is more important than ever.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces Podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Jennifer Marquez at Oaktree Capital Management LP, based in Los Angeles. She started her career as a lawyer, Welcome, Jennifer. Thanks for joining me today.
Jennifer: Thanks, Ethan. It’s great to be with you here today, and thank you for having me on the show.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, we, we don’t have the video on for our audio listeners, but you are sitting there in lovely Los Angeles with sun streaming through your window at 8 o’clock in the morning. So I’d love to know how you ended up in Los Angeles, how you ended up in finance. Take us through from the beginning if you could.
Jennifer: Now, for those listeners that may be less familiar with Oaktree, we are a 30-year vintage global asset manager with a particular focus on performing and opportunistic credit investing. We’ve actually been investing in asset-backed finance and traded structured credit for decades, but the genesis for the launch of our dedicated asset-backed finance platform at the start of 2024 was the emergence of what we believe to be a significant private performing credit version of the opportunity. As some listeners may be aware, in 2019, we signed our original partnership with Brookfield, and later this year, we will become fully part of the Brookfield group. Together, we represent almost $350 billion in credit assets under management. And with our other capabilities in real estate, in infrastructure, and in private equity, we’re really able to offer our clients the full breadth of investment solutions. So it’s an exciting time for both of our platforms. So with that context, to answer your question, I did have a less traditional route into finance. After studying law at Oxford, I went to train and then practiced at the London office of US law firm Cleary Gottlieb Zinn Hamilton. I had a broad transactional practice that covered tax and private fund structuring. And I also then spent some time at Goldman Sachs advising on the structuring of transactions for the merchant banking group and the European special situations group. So when I joined Oaktree, which is almost a decade ago now, it was originally in that same transactional structuring capacity. Put simply, I helped make sure the investments we did across our performing and opportunistic credit platform were structured in the most efficient way from a tax and regulatory perspective. And I also worked on a lot of our new business ventures. So things like the structuring of our first European CLO equity fund, for example, or solutions to enable our opportunistic credit platform to do its first investments in India. Over time, I took on more responsibility and eventually relocated from our London office to our headquarters here in Los Angeles and to the sunshine. And took over leadership of our global structuring group. And it was a great role, and I got to work across the breadth of our business, but I always had a yearning to be closer to the commercial side of things. And so when our portfolio manager for structured credit, Brendan Beer, was looking for help in building out our asset-backed finance business, it was an easy decision for me to say yes and to make that internal move.
Aoifinn Devitt: It seems to me that there are quite a few former lawyers in the structured finance business side of things, the investing side of things. What is it about the legal training you’ve had that maybe makes this a suitable area? And what do you bring from that legal training, plus the time and practice?
Jennifer: Yeah, I think that critical legal lens is a very valuable asset in credit investing, particularly in structured credit investing in the area that I specialize in. And then more broadly at Oaktree, I think there’s a deep respect for that type of thinking, with many of our senior leadership actually having started out their careers as lawyers also. So Bruce Karsh, one of our founding partners, is legally qualified, for example, and a lot of the roots of our distressed credit business were indeed built around that deep understanding of the bankruptcy and restructuring laws in the US. Our co-CEO, Armen Panosyan, who has, among various different qualifications, a law degree. So I think it’s woven into the fabric of our firm to think like that. And in a sense, we talk about credit as a negative art. You are really evaluated by the bad credits you avoid that would otherwise harm your performance. And so the first question we ask on any investment that we’re evaluating is, how could we lose money on this? And so I think that focus on downside protection, on covenants in the documents, on enforcement scenarios is an exercise that I think legal training in particular places you very well for. And then specifically for what I do for our structured credit business, from a business strategy perspective, our industry is evolving so rapidly. So whether that be how we can offer semi-liquid solutions to wealth and retail investors, or how we can offer private market solutions within 401(k)s, or how we can just bring our platform to our global investors in a variety of different jurisdictions, an ability to digest the web of regulations and laws that govern these areas has been invaluable to me. And I think we want to be at the forefront of solving complexity for our clients. And again, legal training is a very good background for that.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that’s a perfect segue into my next topic, which was around the evolution of these areas you focus on, structured finance, asset-backed financing. And can you take us through a little bit of that evolution? Because obviously this area was very much in focus during GFC, the financial crisis. It seems to have matured, changed its stripes in some way. Evolved since then? Perhaps what are the characteristics that are different from then? If you could tell us a little bit about the snapshot of these strategies today.
Jennifer: Absolutely. So I like to start, if listeners will indulge me, in a little explainer of how we define asset-backed finance, since I think everyone thinks about it a bit differently. So in essence, asset-backed finance can be simplified to the business of lending to lenders. Every time a bank or a specialty finance company issues a credit card or a mortgage, writes an equipment lease, they are originating an asset. That’s the asset in asset-backed finance. So if origination is the business of extending credit or making a loan, then asset-backed finance is the business of funding those loans or where the money comes from. Now, as you said, banks have been financing the breadth of the global economy with these financing structures for decades. So what’s new today is not so much the asset class, there’s been decades of dependable data in the different sectors that we’re financing here, but rather the changing role of banks. So banks in response to various different headwinds, fiscal tightening, concerns about the reliability of deposits, balance sheet valuation concerns, have been significantly reducing their footprint in asset-backed finance and have generally refocused their activities on fee and deposit generative businesses. And so that’s giving rise to a really interesting opportunity for private alternative lenders such as Oaktree, who have the necessary expertise to step in and fill that financing void. You know, Oaktree, we like to talk a lot about cycles, and right now in asset-backed finance, we’re in a similar place to where we were with corporate credit over a decade ago, when you saw that first wave of bank retrenchment and private credit was able to really step in and provide an alternative solution. So that’s on the supply side. You just have a dearth of capital providers that are able to fully finance the breadth of the ABF need. And then on the demand side, you’ve seen a growing trend of companies wanting to move towards balance sheet light financing structures, and also a growth in areas of commerce and industry that really naturally lend themselves to securitization financing. So things like digital infrastructure, fiber to the premises technology, for example, or power necessary to fuel data centers catering to the AI need. So we just have very favorable supply and demand dynamics in asset-backed finance right now, and that means not only can we command a healthy spread premium compared to other areas within private credit, but that we’re also able to really be in the driving seat in obtaining robust creditor protections that we demand on behalf of our clients. So again, to go back to that focus on downside protection, that’s a core of everything that we do at Oaktree, this is a very interesting space for us. And then I agree that the market has matured post the global financial crisis. And if you look at what really happened there, that was a situation not just of structural concern, but also fundamentally asset concern. The underlying subprime mortgages being securitized were fundamentally bad assets. And so a strict evaluation of asset quality in our view is as important today as it was back then. And that’s why you need both the structuring expertise, but also the deep sector expertise to be able to navigate this market well.
Aoifinn Devitt: And in terms of some of the current market conditions in the last, say, 6 months, there’s been some isolated incidents of maybe cracks in the private credit edifice, suggestions of perhaps some pain that was not yet systemic but was rising. From your vantage point, when you look at the default environment, and we’re recording this in February 2026, maybe within structured finance in particular, what do you see there in terms of evidence of default or some of the safeguards?
Jennifer: Yeah, so taking a step back, I mean, over the last decade, private credit has evolved into an important pillar of how we grow and provide fuel for our global economy. It’s now a permanent feature in our financial system, providing flexible capital solutions to grow and sustain businesses is the reason that the private credit markets have boomed. And although we have seen some well-documented recent defaults, I think the overall experience in private credit has still been strong current income and relatively low losses. Now in ABF, we are earlier in the cycle, as I said, and the opportunity set is actually much, much broader than the corporate credit opportunity in the terms of the market size. And our market opportunity is also generally not dependent on M&A volumes or base rates. I like to say colloquially, we’re financing I’m addressing Main Street, not Wall Street here. So periods of market volatility can actually be opportunities for us as the public securitization markets often slow down, creating a need for more flexible private alternative solutions. So we saw that in April last year, for example, in the immediate aftermath of the tariff announcements, we saw both a slight widening in the pricing we could achieve in private asset-backed finance, but also just more inbound calls for our capital. And so of course we have a constant eye on the macro backdrop as our investments are not immune from risks, but the diversity of the opportunity set means that we should be able to, in asset-backed finance, remain consistently invested, consistently deploy at scale, and consistently find pockets of relative value throughout market cycles. And then in the terms of how we think about downside protection and risk of loss in our asset class, So structured finance is, as the name may suggest, a highly structured asset class. We have the benefit of the use of various different tools within the way we structure our investments to actually provide significant cushion from any potential non-performance in the underlying pool of assets that we’re financing. So loss in structured finance is not as much as a binary receive payment, do not receive payment, as you might have in other areas of private credit. And obviously we think very deeply about the originators that we want to partner with. And again, a lot of the recent well-documented situations have been, in our view, as such cases of— I like to simplify everything that we do in our credit analysis of a case of good assets. What is the probability of performance in the assets that we’re financing then? And then good originator. On the other hand, what is the originator’s business? How are they motivated? How do they make and lose money? And are they a company that we want to partner with? Do we feel aligned with their own origination practices? And so our analysis is twofold, and I think protecting against downside risks requires you to think both of the quantitative analysis and also that more nuanced qualitative analysis of who you want to work with.
Aoifinn Devitt: We’re going to take a quick break to hear from one of the sponsors of this series, Benefit Street Partners, BSP. I sat down with Rich Byrne, President and CEO of BSP, and asked him about the importance of hiring for cognitive diversity within the firm. I think it’s great when people have varied interests. It’s just not that interesting to see somebody who was a business undergraduate and business school graduate major and then went into investment banking and, you know, sometimes become somewhat one-dimensional. And remember, everything we do probably in the entire work world, but certainly in the Wall Street workspace, is there’s a sales component. You’re interacting with other people, whether they’re clients or your internal constituents. I just think it makes you more relatable, more human, more interesting to have varied interests. Now, back to the show. And speaking of working with, you mentioned the evolution of your product range and the clients and how their needs are evolving, whether it be in the private wealth arena, semi-liquid products. Where are we exactly now in terms of that evolution, would you say, in terms of the— do you see more of this on the horizon?
Jennifer: Yeah, so at Oaktree, we have a broad client base, and that includes many large institutions and a significant wealth and retail client base as well. Looking looking at asset-backed finance in particular, asset-backed finance is a good complement to or diversifier from corporate credit exposure that clients may have in their portfolio. Our assets tend to be a little shorter duration, are often self-amortizing, meaning that you get both interest and regular principal repayments. And then given the breadth of what we’re financing, a potentially less correlated return than other private and public credit markets may produce. And then, as I said, given this favorable supply and demand dynamics, our focus on the core area of private asset-backed finance is also available at a premium today. So it’s an attractive yield opportunity. So with all that background, I think that our wealth clients, for example, that may have corporate credit investments in BDCs are seeing asset-backed finance as an interesting opportunity now to complement that corporate credit position that they might have in a BDC. And equally, we see the same with our institutional client base. And so I think that we will see significant uptake for this product in the wealth and the retail market. And then the other thing I would say is they obviously have key focus in serving that segment of the market into liquidity. And the cash profile of our asset class is such that, as I said, our investments are often self-amortizing or self-liquidating, which means our asset class, I think, fits particularly well for clients that want a semi-liquid solution. And we compare private asset-backed finance, for example, with a liquid traded structured credit sleeve to provide a solution to those clients that do have liquidity needs. So I see this asset class as serving both our institutional and our wealth clients very well. The European market is still a little bit more heavily banked than the US, and we’re seeing such, you know, a lot to do in the US, but we think it’s really important to be able to provide clients with a diversified global portfolio, and that will be a key part of our offering.
Aoifinn Devitt: So we recorded our podcast in early February 2026, and much has occurred since then, including in particular a SaaS apocalypse as investors grew concerned about rapid AI advances that could potentially threaten SaaS companies. Private credit has equally come under the microscope for its exposures there. I sat down again with Jennifer Marquez to discuss how this current, the recent developments in the credit arena how Oaktree has been responding.
Jennifer: Thanks for having me again, Ethan. So look, if you take a step back, what’s really going on in private credit right now is natural late stage in the cycle dispersion. Some of the recent wobbles or cracks are in our view, really evidence of dropped underwriting standards or potentially lax diligence by some. The types of things that you see when you have overreaching later in the cycle. Now, obviously at Oaktree, we’ve been investing through credit cycles for over 30 30 years. So we don’t believe that this is systemic. And in our view now, that discipline and diligence in underwriting, and then specifically for us in asset-backed, that critical evaluation of who you are working with and spotting bad actors— remember, we’re lending to the lenders— is more important than ever. We’re ultimately in a transition period where private credit is moving from a rate-driven environment to a credit-driven one. And that’s typically where manager discipline matters most, and it’s where experienced lenders tend to differentiate themselves. So I think at this point in the credit cycle, it’s natural to see some dispersion in results between different managers. And then on software specifically, I think you’ll also see dispersion. You’ll see managers with more or less credit exposure in their portfolios, and then winners and losers within software. Those that have deep moats, proprietary data, integration with systems, and the resources to invest in AI may through well on the other side. Moving though to asset-backed, what we are doing is quite different. This is real economy financing, equipment leasing, transportation, so potentially less exposed to broader AI disruption themes. And structurally, asset-backed finance is also very different to other forms of corporate private credit. That self-amortizing or self-liquidating feature I mentioned earlier, well, that means we are less exposed to valuation-based refinancing events to get repaid. And what’s really going on in software right now is, of course, a valuation question. So for those reasons, I think we’ll continue to see asset-backed finance as a good complement to, or diversifier from, a well-picked, well-diligenced corporate credit portfolio.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you for that. And I’d love to now move to some personal reflections. So we’ve spoken about your career journey, moving from law into finance and also moving geographies. Were there any highs and lows throughout that time? And maybe in case of the lows, any particular lessons learned?
Jennifer: Yes, so there have been many highs. I am fortunate to love what I do, and I get to work with amazing people on really interesting transactions. I get to travel the world meeting our global client base, and I’ve had the opportunity obviously to, to move to and to live and work in the US. I think the things that I’m most proud of, the real highs for me if I look back over the course of my career, is is where teams that I’ve helped build have won as a team. And so obviously, most recently, the build-out of our asset-backed finance business has been a key high. But, you know, many times, you know, looking at situations where the teams that I’ve led have outperformed or overdelivered or exceeded expectations in some way has been a very proud moment for me. And then more generally, I’m an optimist, so I like to focus on the positives. You know, reflecting lows have included times that we’ve made mistakes that could have been avoided, or when a perspective not listened to as closely turns out to be very valuable, for example. I think it’s very important to listen as a leader, and I also think that cognitive diversity and decision-making is very important.
Aoifinn Devitt: And then outside the professional domain, on a personal level, were there any setbacks or challenges in that domain that you’ve learned lessons from and maybe internalized and maybe even brought into the workplace?
Jennifer: So I did experience a big personal challenge last year. On January 7th, 2025, we lost our home and we lost all of our belongings in the LA wildfires. Our daughter’s school, many of our friends’ houses, and tragically, many other colleagues at Oaktree also lost everything. It was a very shocking experience and not one I ever expected to go through. There is a fellow mother at my daughter’s school who also sadly lost her home in the fires and who also happens to be the CEO of a large LA-headquartered asset manager. And she wrote a very powerful letter to their employees the day after the fires, which said, and I quote, “The only way forward is through.” And the piece of advice that I have consistently given to mentees over my career is that resilience is one of the most important career skills. There will be times when a pitch falls flat or an idea needs to be reworked, or there is a loss on an investment or a missed opportunity. And the ability to get back up, to rework, to learn, to improve, and to come back better, faster, and stronger is what I believe produces success us over the long term. And in those days, the immediate days after the fires, I realized that my own resilience was truly being tested. You know, we had a very busy period of fundraising and commitments that we’d made to clients and stakeholders to meet. And so I did the only thing I think there is to do, which is to continue through. I was obviously fortunate to have the support of many incredible people, including my amazing husband, who is my rock and also the biggest supporter of my career. But, you know, in that time I was so impressed by the resilience that I saw around me of my colleagues at Oaktree who never stopped serving our clients despite the fact that almost everybody in our LA office was evacuated, and then of my community and ultimately of the city itself. So I think LA has a lot to learn from the fires, but I learned a lot about my own resilience during that period. And as a result, I am that bit more proud of what our business achieved in 2025. As a result, I believe that if you approach any setback or challenge with that curiosity of what can I learn from this, what can I take from this, and ultimately what will make me stronger, that over the long term you will go further.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you for sharing that, and I’m so sorry that you did experience that. We had a guest some time ago, Tom Soto, who not only, he did not lose his own house, but the way he, he took his energy and put it into rebuilding his son’s school, ensuring they could have temporary accommodation. It was a remarkable example of people and responses at their best. Just my last question on that tragic event is, is just to, to ask, how do you see the world differently now? I think I mentioned in our pre-meeting, I had experienced a bus accident in my, you know, at age 11. And I certainly treated life a little differently when I came out of that experience knowing that, you know, how close I had come perhaps to a different outcome. And I would imagine in your case there is a material goods, I suppose, that have been damaged, heirlooms, but equally no lives lost, thank goodness. Did you, do you have a different just lens, I suppose, after that?
Jennifer: I mean, I do think it makes you focus on what truly matters. We were very fortunate we weren’t actually in the country at the time, so We never were at risk. Our family weren’t at risk physically.
Aoifinn Devitt: We were—
Jennifer: everybody was safe. Everybody was fine. And I think that, that, you know, you’re incredibly grateful for that. And it really does make you focus on your support system, your family, your friends, and what they mean to you. And again, that sense of community rising together through difficulties and supporting each other, I think is very powerful. And that was the thing that really shone for me in those weeks and months afterwards, just how much everybody, you know, obviously at Oaktree, because we’re at our headquarters and it’s our home, but also more broadly in, in my professional and personal networks stood up around us. And I think that’s incredible to see.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s a nice link to my next question about key people. Usually this is a professional question around mentors or anybody that was instrumental in your career. And I know you’ve mentioned your husband and his support. And, and this does not have to be an exhaustive list, but any other names you’d like to, to call out in terms of people who are particularly influential for you?
Jennifer: So I’m fortunate to have had and still have many wonderful managers and mentors, you know, people at the top of their career who’ve given me their time and their great advice and their support and their sponsorship. Yeah, I won’t list all of their names, but if they’re listening, they know who they are and I thank them deeply. Early in my career, though, there were not as many women in senior leadership roles in our industry as you see today. And I remember there was one incredible partner at the law firm that I trained at, and I can give a name here as it’s, it’s a while back, Elizabeth Lennis. And she is an amazing lawyer. She’s charismatic. She was great with clients. And I think that early type of inspiration really makes you envisage what is possible at a very formative time. In your career where you’re starting to literally see how you could develop. And I truly believe that you cannot be what you cannot see. And so today I try and pay that forward to seek to empower women that I work with in our industry. And to, you know, if I can repay the help that I received in some small way, then that means a lot to me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, my last question is then around any advice that maybe you got within these mentorship circles or elsewhere any creed or motto that you live by and that can leave with us here?
Jennifer: I think don’t be afraid to take risks, to try new things, particularly early in your career. Get stuck in and help out with everyone and everything. Seek to provide solutions. Busy people, particularly busy important people with the ability to positively influence your career, love well-thought-out solutions. And then one that I still live by today is never let a good crisis go to waste. When all around are losing their heads, the ability to remain calm and to consider a potential upside in the problem, I think, is a superpower.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much, Jennifer. Throughout our conversation, your clear legal mind, your logic has come through from start to finish. It has been a very clear description of the opportunity set. In asset-backed financing and structured finance, of its evolution to address a growing market of high net worth investors that are seeking this diversification. And thank you for setting out so beautifully the power of community, the power of mentorship, and ultimately the importance of advocacy, self-advocacy, and that risk-taking that you mentioned. Thank you for coming here and sharing your insights with us.
Jennifer: Thank you, Yvonne. I appreciate it.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces Podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors and their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm.
