Direct lenders have played an increasingly influential role in European middle market lending since the financial crisis, taking market share from banks. As banks retrenched and restructured their balance sheets in the years following the market collapse, direct lending funds, particularly from the US, stepped in to lend to leveraged mid-cap businesses, typically companies with Ebitda of €10m-€50m. The number of unitranche deals - where a direct lender provides a borrower with a blended yield across a single tranche of combined senior and mezzanine debt - hit 65 in the first three quarters of 2015, according to Thomson Reuters LPC data. That surpasses the 2014 total of 58 deals and is miles ahead of the single unitranche deal of 2007.
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