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With the club season over ahead of a World Cup summer, football fans are starting to single out who their ‘dark horse’ is to go all the way. It’s probably the first tournament in a while where fans aren’t talking up Belgium — that golden generation has been and gone.
However, when it comes to private credit, direct lending deals in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg are increasingly a major geography in the wider European private credit theatre of dreams.
Benelux became the third-most popular market in Q1 26 with 15% of European direct lending deals, pipping France which posted 14%. It also nearly doubled its market share from 8% in Q1 25 and improving on a similar Q3 25 print of 14%, according to 9fin’s latest European Private Credit Data Review.
9fin sat down with Jorg Sallaerts, head of Benelux at Arcmont Asset Managementand alumnus of Ares Management and ING’s private credit and leveraged finance operations, to discuss all things Belgian, Dutch, and Luxembourgish direct lending — and a certain Dutch team...
