彭博深度报道：悉尼开发商 Bathla Group 宣告资不抵债，A$33 亿债务波及 40 余家私人信贷基金（含 PAG、Centuria Bass），澳洲 A$2000 亿私人信贷市场地产集中度风险暴露

At the height of Sydney’s red-hot housing boom, Bathla Group had its pick of lenders willing to finance its sprawling empire of cheap apartments.

The property developer took out land loans, construction loans and even “residual stock” loans, promising to pay about 15% returns on many of them – a sweet deal by industry standards. Some of the debt had personal guarantees from Bhart Bhushan, a former taxi driver who started the company in 1997. Bathla’s aggressive expansion sometimes raised eyebrows, but there was always plenty of demand from financiers including PAG, one of Asia’s largest private investment firms.

But the assumptions that allowed Bathla to rack up A$3.3 billion ($2.4 billion) in debt from more than 40 private credit funds have been shaken as Australia’s housing market undergoes a painful correction driven by rising interest rates and tax reforms. Property prices have fallen for five months in a row. The deepest drop has been in Sydney, where Bathla is on the hook to deliver thousands of homes. Last week, the company declared insolvency, rattling private creditors who are now scrambling to recoup their cash.

Read More: One of World’s Longest Housing Booms Is Cracking in Sydney

The question is whether there are more Bathlas to come. While few Australian builders are known to have amassed non-bank borrowings on the same scale, many are getting squeezed by rising costs and weakening demand. It’s a scenario that regulators and finance veterans warned was brewing in Australia’s A$200 billion private credit market, where as much as 60%of lending has gone to real estate. In North America, the property sector makes up 15% to 20% of the private credit universe, according to MSCI Research.

A handful of Australian private credit firms have capped withdrawals to contain panic over Bathla’s distress, echoing restrictions by large fund managers including Blue Owl Capital and Blackstone Inc. earlier this year as concern spread over software bets. Turmoil in the global market last year prompted JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief Jamie Dimon to warn that more “cockroaches” would surface in the opaque world of private lending.

In recent years, some large Australian asset managers steered clear of private credit funds tied to the property sector because they were worried about this very outcome. “We were concerned with the concentration risk within Australian private credit around real estate,” said Jonathan Armitage, chief investment officer of Colonial First State, a Sydney-based pension and wealth manager overseeing around A$181 billion.

Australian property developers used to borrow mostly from banks. But rules put in place after the global financial crisis required traditional lenders to hold more capital for loans to construction companies because building from scratch was considered a higher risk. As they pulled back, less regulated private credit funds filled the void, lured by returns comparable to the stock market.

Bathla’s larger creditors have downplayed the risk of any potential losses. PAG, which extended more than A$300 million to the builder, hasn’t restricted withdrawals because it believes it’s in a better position to be repaid and its debt is well secured, according to a person familiar with the matter. Centuria Bass said it didn’t anticipate any material impact to its funds, though it halted redemptions on two vehicles. PAG declined to comment.

Where possible, lenders are stepping in to see some projects through. Balmain, one of Bathla’s smaller creditors, plans to advance an extra A$1 million to complete a building in the Kembla Grange suburb south of Sydney, according to Chief Executive Officer Andrew Griffin. “I’m not overly worried,” he said. “Balmain has loaned money to Bathla for decades,” he added, “but in recent years we scaled back lending on concerns Bathla had become too stretched across too many projects.”

That’s cold comfort for Janice Cahill, a 70-year-old retiree who put down a 10% deposit on an A$600,000 two-bedroom apartment in the Kembla Grange development in 2024. She wanted to move to be closer to her grandchildren. After almost two years of delays, Cahill is still stuck in her one-bedroom rental with her belongings in storage.

“I felt sick,” she said, of hearing the news of Bathla’s insolvency. At least now with Balmain’s plan to finish the project, she said, “we do have an end in sight.”

The problem is that not all of Bathla’s loans are tied to almost-completed developments like the one in Kembla Grange, if they’re secured at all. Bathla used land, properties and mortgage payments worth more than A$4.5 billion as collateral, according to one creditor. The result will be a range of outcomes: If a fund’s money is tied to a project that hasn’t even broken ground or is partially constructed, the only solution may be to bring in a new developer, risking higher costs and longer delays.

Bathla’s growth story used to look quite compelling, said Jason Lont, founder of Fides Capital, but the local asset manager still turned down opportunities to finance the developer’s projects. “Companies that are growing strongly in boom markets aren’t as alarming, but those that are still growing when markets are more subdued” are a “red flag,” he said.

One private credit fund manager said she has avoided Bathla deals for the last few years even though its term sheets were sent to her every couple of months. The concern was that the company grew too quickly and was too willing to pay premium prices for land, she said.

For now, Bathla’s backers are doing what they can to keep construction going. PAG has promised to pay contractors directly to keep working on a 312-apartment block in west Sydney, according to a person familiar. There’s still some hope among lenders that the government will step in with support, according to a creditor involved in talks, though policy makers have denied they will do so.

The upheaval in Australia’s property market is forcing investors who oversee hundreds of billions to rethink their exposure. Stuart Eliot, general manager of AMP, said the A$168 billion pension and wealth manager remains “somewhat cautious” on private credit. While problems will likely be contained to real estate, rising rates and policy changes have had a “profound effect,” he said, adding that the housing price slump “may be only halfway done.”