(24 October 2025 – Global) East & Partners global analyst meeting insights share valuable insights from the team based across Australia, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom.
The following analyst meeting summary provides a unique breakdown of emerging research focus areas, strategic drivers and CFO/corporate treasurer thought leadership thematics for 2026 and beyond.
Private Capital Under the Microscope
Non-banks continue to lean in heavily to the gap left by incumbent bank majors since the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC). One of the most critically important trends in banking is the significant and growing volume of to the “shadow banking” sector, many of which are traditional financial institutions (FIs) direct rivals. Traditional bank lending to non-banks and private credit outfits has more than doubled since the pandemic in the United States, surpassing US$1 trillion in 2024 according to Bloomberg.
As a result regulators have heightened their level of oversight as unprecedented liquidity and credit risks emerge. Bank of England (BoE) Governor Andrew Bailey warns recent events in US private credit markets have “worrying echoes of the sub-prime mortgage crisis” that triggered the GFC. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warned that the First Brands collapse wouldn’t be the last problem to emerge from the private credit sector: “My antenna goes up when things like that happen. I probably shouldn’t say this, but when you see one cockroach, there are probably more. Everyone should be forewarned on this one.”
In contrast Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said risks surrounding the rapid growth of private credit shouldn’t be painted with a broad brush and aren’t causing major systemic issues among banks. Scharf distinguished between fraud and credit issues, saying there’s a big difference between what could be a fraud and what is a credit issue driven by poor performance of the underlying customer base of companies.
Where do Australia’s largest corporates stand on private credit? Where do they prefer to source Private Credit borrowings from and what percentage of their total borrowings are Private Credit derived?
How has the increasing regulatory scrutiny impacted their adoption of private credit and If what specific risk management frameworks have they put in place to address potential challenges?
For all these valuable insights and more stay tuned for the latest exclusive Capital Brief and East & Partners research based on direct interviews with CFOs and treasurers on this topic next month. Capital Brief and East & Partners have launched an exclusive, ongoing research series creating a barometer for Private Credit and M&A activities across corporate Australia based on direct interviews with 95 CFOs and treasurers of the Top 100 revenue ranked corporates.
AI Progress at Threat of “Model Collapse”
The internet’s slow death is gathering pace according to Oxford researchers as measured by online content written by humans vs artificial intelligence (AI).
AI content has surged from five percent in 2020 to 48 percent as of May 2025. Projections suggest this will only increase to 90 percent plus by 2026 mainly because AI articles cost cents in the dollar while human writers cost US$10-100.
The threat of model collapse is a growing concern highlighted by Axios. When AI trains on AI-generated content, quality degrades like photocopying a photocopy – it’s dangerously recursive. Today’s “AI slop” becomes tomorrow’s training data, producing worse output, which becomes training data again. Verifiable, authentic, human-generated data for training the next generation of models is now more valuable than ever – “genuine, niche, human expertise that stands out from the sea of synthetic sameness. For now, humans still want to read content that is written mostly by humans.”
Asset Finance Market Consolidation Gathers Pace
With the announcement of BoQ’s novel equipment finance loan book sale, consolidation in the fiercely competitive asset finance market continues to ratchet higher. The latest development in the sale sees Pepper Money reportedly throw its hat in the ring to acquire BoQ’s equipment loan book, joining a long list of credit funds such as Apollo that are also seeking to acquire the book with BofA providing the funding on the sale.
East & Partners Asset Finance market service, entering two decades of consecutive research and analysis on complex and evolving asset financing behaviour market wide from Microbusiness to large corporates, provides detailed insight into competitive positioning of incumbent majors including CBA and NAB alongside non-bank majors such as Maia Financial and ScotPac.
As customer switching intent accelerates to a record high without denting profitability or resulting in any material lift in default rates, how are CFOs and treasurers reacting and what opportunities are there to tap into the valuable broker channel?
October Analyst Meeting Insights
The October 2025 analyst meeting insights presented the latest developments in Stablecoins, AI and forecast M&A deal flow activity
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