Private credit has not had an easy year. Investors have pulled money out of private-credit funds at a record pace, worried about loose lending standards and exposure to software companies that AI has hit.
There are also fewer deals to finance. The private-equity market is slow, which means lenders are not seeing as many transactions cross their desks.
That makes Ares Management Corp.'s latest move stand out. Ares is leading $2.2 billion in direct lending to support MedImpact Holdings Inc., which manages prescription drug coverage for health plans as a pharmacy benefits manager, in its planned acquisition of Medical Card System, a healthcare services company based in Puerto Rico.
Direct lending is what happens when a non-bank lender lends straight to a company, often one that already carries a lot of debt.
The private credit market behind it is worth $1.8 trillion.
A loan this size would be one of 2026's biggest in that market.
The loan would not be cheap. People familiar with the deal, who asked not to be named because the details are private, said interest on the loan would be at least 8 percentage points above the benchmark rate, the baseline lenders use to price loans.
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There is a reason for the big premium.
The debt would be second-lien, meaning Ares and its partners would get repaid only after first-lien lenders are paid. Being second in line carries more risk, so the borrower has to pay for it. In private credit, these distinctions are negotiated loan by loan rather than set on a public exchange. That makes the interest-rate premium a direct measure of how much added risk the lender is taking on.
As of August 5, 2026, terms were still not final. Ares declined to comment, while MedImpact, Medical Card System, and Medical Card System's owner, Kinderhook Industries, did not immediately respond.
LevFin Insights was first to report some details of the financing.
MedImpact is not a household name, but it sits in the middle of how prescription drugs get covered. A 2023 Moody's Ratings report said MedImpact's founder and CEO owns a majority stake.
MedImpact's site says Frederick Howe, who founded the firm more than three decades ago, also worked as a pharmacist and operated an independent pharmacy.
Kinderhook Industries, a middle-market investment firm, has owned Medical Card System since 2022.
Ares is also working on a separate debt package worth £1 billion ($1.3 billion) to support Toscafund Asset Management's possible takeover of Spire Healthcare Group Plc, a company based in London.
That gives Ares at least two healthcare loans it is trying to put together, even while the broader private credit market is under pressure.
This deal is a window into how private credit really works. The market is not one giant lump of money; it is a place where risk gets priced deal by deal, and the price shows up in terms like "second-lien" and "8 percentage points above the benchmark rate."
For most investors, this is not something they can buy in a trading app. It is a reminder that a lot of market activity happens in private deals, far from public exchanges.
Those details matter because they decide who gets paid back first and how much they are paid for waiting. At a time when investors are pulling cash out of private credit, a deal this size shows that lenders are still putting money to work.
That tension can create opportunity, but it also creates risk, and a lot of that risk hides in the fine print.
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