Palmer Square Capital, the $37 Billion CLO Firm Run by a Husband-and-Wife Team, Explores a Sale

Palmer Square Capital Management, a Kansas-based credit shop that grew into one of the largest issuers of collateralized loan obligations in the United States, is exploring a sale of its roughly $37 billion business, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the discussions. Crypto Briefing confirmed the same details, reporting the firm has engaged banking advisors to gauge interest from potential buyers.

The talks are early and confidential, both outlets reported. No buyer has been named, and no deal terms have surfaced. Whether the Longs sell the whole firm, a stake, or nothing at all remains an open question.

Who Built It

Palmer Square was founded in 2009 by Chris Long, who serves as chairman and CEO, and his wife Angie Long, the firm's chief investment officer, according to Crypto Briefing. The two met at Princeton and worked together at JPMorgan Chase before striking out on their own during the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

Seventeen years later, they've built a global operation with an office in London and roughly $27 billion of that $37 billion in assets sitting in CLO structures, per Crypto Briefing's reporting. Beyond CLOs, the firm runs opportunistic credit, income and short-duration strategies, and private credit funds. It also manages a publicly traded business development company, Palmer Square Capital BDC Inc., which lends directly to middle-market companies.

Most firms this size in structured credit trace back to a bank trading desk or a private equity platform with dozens of founding partners. Palmer Square traces back to two people who met at Princeton and decided to bet on themselves.

Why Now

The timing lines up with a broader consolidation wave hitting credit asset management, Crypto Briefing reported. Bloomberg's own coverage this week included GE's $11.75 billion agreement to buy Consolidated Precision Products, a separate deal but part of the same dealmaking backdrop Bloomberg's Matt Monks and Scarlet Fu discussed on "Bloomberg Deals" when covering the Palmer Square story.

The CLO market itself has quadrupled over the past 15 years, growing to more than $1.3 trillion, according to Crypto Briefing. That growth has been driven by demand for floating-rate, senior-secured loan exposure. When interest rates climb, floating-rate instruments look more attractive next to fixed-rate bonds, and that pulls fresh capital into CLO structures. Palmer Square rode that wave from a startup to a global issuer.

Bigger asset managers have been acquiring CLO shops to gain scale, distribution, and a floating-rate product that institutional investors keep asking for. A firm the size of Palmer Square, with a diversified book across CLOs, private credit, and a public BDC, offers an acquirer multiple strategic benefits in one transaction.

What We Don't Know Yet

Neither Bloomberg nor Crypto Briefing named a price tag beyond the firm's roughly $37 billion in assets under management, which is a measure of scale, not a sale valuation. Asset managers typically sell for a multiple of revenue or fee-earning AUM, not a dollar-for-dollar match to assets managed, so any eventual price could look very different from that $37 billion figure.

It's also unclear whether the Longs plan to stay on if a deal happens, or whether this is a full exit. Founder-led firms that sell sometimes keep the founders in place under new ownership; others see a clean handoff. Nothing in the current reporting answers that question either way.

The next milestone to watch is whether a buyer emerges and whether Palmer Square or the Longs make any public statement confirming the sale process, since as of now the company has not issued its own comment on the talks in either report.