Arrow Global on seeing beyond the cycle

In the latest podcast by Private Debt Investor, Zach Lewy, Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Arrow Global, talks to Hannah Roberts about the importance of looking beyond short-term market dislocation and adopting a long-term, locally informed strategy in distressed lending. The discussion explores how structural shifts such as bank retrenchment, policy uncertainty and changing borrower behaviours are reshaping opportunities across Europe, and why Arrow’s pan-European footprint provides a distinct advantage in navigating these dynamics.

“Europe is organised in a very particular way. It’s split into 44 countries. The markets are profoundly local. They’re quite fragmented. Despite, obviously, a considerable period of time and effort on EU harmonisation, the reality on the ground is still that the supermajority of transactions are domestic.”

“The banks are struggling, and the customers are struggling with that older cohort of loans that were done in what feels like a previous era. That’s where we see the largest level of distressed and dislocation.”

“At Arrow, we deploy our money as I think any investor would deploy their personal capital: you would check each asset, you would get local, you’d try and have an information competitive advantage, you’d have an operational competitive advantage, you would use local expertise to exploit the inefficiency of having 44 countries and 7,000 banks.”