Sascha SteffenFrankfurt School · CfET
Research

How private capital lends, where it absorbs stress, and what banks still provide.

Four lines of work, each with a direct line into the Private Credit Radar. Working papers are listed with their current version; publications link to the journal and to replication files where they exist.

Working papers Publications Data and code SSRN Google Scholar
Focus 1

Direct lending and private credit

Cyclicality of direct lending versus syndicated loans, payment-in-kind as forbearance, the funding structure of BDCs.

Radar: PIK · origination · fund liquidity
Focus 2

Bank credit lines to nonbanks

How REITs, funds and direct lenders rely on banks for contingent liquidity, and what that does to bank fragility.

Radar: bank–nonbank interconnection
Focus 3

Leveraged loans, CLOs and covenants

Covenant violations read by machine, institutional trading around violations, pipeline risk in LBO financing.

Radar: covenant events · shadow defaults
Focus 4

Measuring opaque markets

Language models and structured extraction applied to filings, loan documents and social media.

Radar: the extraction pipeline
Working papers

Current versions

Sep 2026
revised

Funding Fragility in Direct Lending

with Elisavet Mistopoulou

A facility-level panel of 195 BDCs and more than 2,900 facilities, 2017–2025, USD 267bn of debt. A three-tier funding hierarchy; 72% of private-BDC debt is bank-originated; the unsecured maturity wall rises from USD 2.4bn in 2023 to USD 18.1bn in 2026.

SSRNCEPR DP21587Radar indicator 6 (fund liquidity)

Mar 2026
new

The Cyclicality of Direct Lending

with Franz Hinzen, Gianluca Mondini and Paul Rintamäki

Direct lending issuance is countercyclical relative to syndicated loans; sponsor-backed firms switch between the two markets, and private credit may dampen the corporate credit cycle. Presented at the 1st Frankfurt Private Capital Symposium (June 2026) and as the PDI DACH Forum keynote (October 2026).

SSRNPaper (PDF)Slides (PDF)Radar indicator 7 (origination and terms at entry)

Mar 2026
revised

When Flexibility Becomes Forbearance: Payment-in-Kind in Private Credit

with Paul Rintamäki

Deferred interest as the first stage of stress absorption in direct lending, measured position by position from BDC schedules of investments.

SSRNOnline appendixRadar indicator 3 (payment-in-kind)

Mar 2026
new version

From Bridge Loans to CLOs to Private Credit: The Transformation of Pipeline Risk in LBO Financing

with Rüdiger Fahlenbrach and Sophie Rotermund

SSRN

Feb 2026
new

Do Institutional Investors Trade on Covenant Violations?

with Anthony Saunders and Paulina M. Verhoff

Covenant violations identified with CovenantAI; cumulative abnormal returns of −6.4% in the window [−80, −60]; constrained CLOs are net sellers. SFS Cavalcade 2026, FIRS 2026.

SSRNRadar indicator 4 (shadow default rate)

Nov 2025
revised

Fragile Financing? How Corporate Reliance on Shadow Banking Affects their Access to Bank Liquidity

with Viral Acharya and Manasa Gopal

NBER Summer Institute Corporate Finance 2025, EFA 2025.

SSRNCEPR DP20179NBER slides (PDF)Radar — bank–nonbank interconnection

Nov 2025
revised

Do Debt Investors Care About ESG Ratings?

with Kornelia Fabisik and Larissa Schäfer

SSRN

Sep 2025
revised

Similar Investors

with Co-Pierre Georg and Diane Pierret

AFA 2024. VoxEU column, "Silicon Valley Bank's insolvency highlights the risk of similar investors" (March 2023).

SSRNCEPR DP19729VoxEU

Nov 2023
revised

Liquidity Dependence and the Waxing and Waning of Central Bank Balance Sheets

with Viral Acharya, Rahul Chauhan and Raghuram Rajan

NBER Monetary Economics 2023, AEA 2024, MoFiR 2025. Covered in Bloomberg, Fortune and FAZ; Project Syndicate op-ed by Acharya and Rajan; Monetary Authority of Singapore Macroeconomic Review special feature.

SSRNOnline appendixSlides (PDF)VoxEU

Jan 2023
revised

Does Zombie Lending Impair Innovation?

with Christian Schmidt, Yannik Schneider, Jana Schuster and Daniel Streitz

SSRN

Under review

Oct 2025

Shadow Always Touches the Feet: Implications of Bank Credit Lines to Non-Bank Financial Intermediaries

with Viral Acharya, Manasa Gopal and Maximilian Jager · EFA 2024, AEA 2025, FIRS 2025

SSRNCEPR DP20064VoxEU

Nov 2025

CovenantAI: New Insights into Covenant Violations

with Anthony Saunders and Paulina M. Verhoff · NBER Big Data and Securities Markets 2023, UCLA Conference on Financial Markets 2024, Future of Financial Information 2024, Harvard-Wharton Insolvency and Restructuring 2024, MoFiR 2025

SSRNCEPR DP20117Online appendix

Dec 2025

From Tweets to Transactions: High-Frequency Inflation Expectations, Consumption, and Stock Returns

with Benjamin Born, Nora Lamersdorf and Jana Schuster · AEA 2024, EFA 2024

SSRNCEPR DP20977

Dec 2025

Climate Transition Risks of Banks

with Felix Martini, Zacharias Sautner and Carola Theunisz · EFA 2024

SSRN

Work in progress

Stranded Liabilities

with Andrea Spina and Daniel Streitz

Publications

Journal articles

RFS 2025
Corporate loan spreads and economic activity. Review of Financial Studies 38(2), 507–546. with Anthony Saunders, Andrea Spina and Daniel Streitz.
SSRNOnline appendixSlides AFA 2022
RFS 2024
Why did bank stocks crash during COVID-19?. Review of Financial Studies 37(9), 2627–2684. with Viral Acharya, Robert Engle and Maximilian Jager.
SSRNNBER w28559Online appendixSlides SFS Cavalcade 2022
ARFE 2024
Contingent credit under stress. Annual Review of Financial Economics 16, 343–365. with Viral Acharya and Maximilian Jager.
SSRNCEPR DP18583
JMCB 2024
Are risky banks disciplined by large corporate depositors?. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. with Björn Imbierowicz and Anthony Saunders.
SSRN
JH 2022
Liquidity Dependence: Why Shrinking Central Bank Balance Sheets Is An Uphill Task. Proceedings of the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. with Viral Acharya, Rahul Chauhan and Raghuram Rajan.
Paper (PDF)
ARFE 2022
Zombie Lending: Theoretical, International, and Historical Perspectives. Annual Review of Financial Economics 14, 21–38. with Viral Acharya, Matteo Crosignani and Tim Eisert.
SSRN
ARFE 2021
Trends in Corporate Borrowing. Annual Review of Financial Economics 13, 321–340. with Tobias Berg and Anthony Saunders.
SSRNOnline appendixReplication code
RFS 2021
Kicking the can down the road: government interventions in the European banking sector. Review of Financial Studies 34(9), 4090–4131. with Viral Acharya, Lea Borchert and Maximilian Jager.
SSRNNBER w27537SlidesBailout data (xlsx)
JFE 2021
"Brexit" and the Contraction of Syndicated Lending. Journal of Financial Economics 141(1), 66–82. with Tobias Berg, Anthony Saunders and Larissa Schäfer.
JFI 2021
The Wolves of Wall Street: Managerial Attributes and Bank Business Models. Journal of Financial Intermediation 47, 1–13 (lead article). with Jens Hagendorff, Anthony Saunders and Francesco Vallascas.
FMII 2021
Lender of Last Resort versus Buyer of Last Resort: Evidence from the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments 30(4), 87–112. with Viral Acharya and Diane Pierret.
SSRN
JFE 2020
Does the Lack of Financial Stability Impair the Transmission of Monetary Policy?. Journal of Financial Economics 138(2), 342–365. with Viral Acharya, Björn Imbierowicz and Daniel Teichmann.
SSRNOnline appendix
RCFS 2020
The risk of being a fallen angel and the corporate dash for cash in the midst of COVID. Review of Corporate Finance Studies 9(3), 430–471. with Viral Acharya.
SSRN
JFS 2020
A Zero-Risk Weight Channel of Sovereign Risk Spillovers. Journal of Financial Stability 51. with Karolin Kirschenmann and Josef Korte.
JFE 2019
A Capital Structure Channel of Monetary Policy. Journal of Financial Economics 133(2), 357–378. with Benjamin Grosse-Rueschkamp and Daniel Streitz.
SSRNOnline appendixSlides
JFS 2018
Syndication, Interconnectedness and Systemic Risk. Journal of Financial Stability 34, 105–120. with Jian Cai, Frederik Eidam and Anthony Saunders.
SSRN
JCF 2017
Covenant Violations and Dynamic Loan Contracting. Journal of Corporate Finance 45, 540–565. with Felix Freudenberg, Björn Imbierowicz and Anthony Saunders.
SSRN
JFI 2017
What do a million observations have to say about loan defaults? Opening the black box of relationships. Journal of Financial Intermediation 31, 1–15 (lead article). with Manju Puri and Jörg Rocholl.
SSRN
RFS 2017
Mind the Gap: The Difference between US and European Loan Rates. Review of Financial Studies 30(3), 948–987. with Tobias Berg, Anthony Saunders and Daniel Streitz.
SSRN
JF 2016
The Total Costs of Corporate Borrowing in the Loan Market: Don't Ignore the Fees. Journal of Finance 71(3), 1357–1392. with Tobias Berg and Anthony Saunders.
SSRNOnline appendixFee data and code
JFE 2015
The "Greatest" Carry Trade Ever? Understanding Eurozone Bank Risks. Journal of Financial Economics 115(2), 215–236 (lead article). with Viral Acharya.
JFSR 2013
Do Information Rents in Loan Spreads Persist over the Business Cycle?. Journal of Financial Services Research 43, 175–195. with Julian Mattes and Mark Wahrenburg.
RFS 2011
The Costs of Being Private: Evidence from the Loan Market. Review of Financial Studies 24(12), 4091–4122. with Anthony Saunders.
SSRNOnline appendix
JFE 2011
Global Retail Lending in the Aftermath of the US Financial Crisis: Distinguishing between Demand and Supply Effects. Journal of Financial Economics 100(3), 556–578. with Manju Puri and Jörg Rocholl.
JBF 2010
On Syndicate Composition, Corporate Structure and the Certification Effect of Credit Ratings. Journal of Banking and Finance 35, 290–299. with Oliver Bosch.

Full CV (PDF)

Data and code

Replication files

  • Private Credit Radar series, quarterlyradar_series.csvfrom 2 Nov 2026
  • Total cost of borrowing (JF 2016): hand-collected fee data, TCB measure, do-filesfee data · tcb.dta · variables · extract.do · tcb.do
  • Trends in Corporate Borrowing (ARFE 2021): Dealscan and Capital IQ do-files, five figuresdealscan · capitaliq · fig1 · fig2 · fig3 · fig4 · fig5
  • Government interventions in European banking, 2007–2019 (RFS 2021)xlsx
  • CovenantAI online appendixpdf
  • Online appendices for published paperslinked under each paper
Research statement

Summary of the research agenda.

Download (PDF, May 2024)