May 1 (Reuters) – Brown University’s $8 billion endowment cut its stake in a publicly traded private credit fund run by alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital by roughly 53%, according to a regulatory filing on Friday.
The Ivy League institute slashed its stake in Blue Owl Capital Corp, the firm’s biggest publicly traded private credit fund, to 1.5 million shares at the end of March 31, compared with 3.2 million shares at the end of 2025, the 13-F filing showed.
The university, however, retained its entire stake of roughly 2.6 million shares in the management company.
Publicly traded BDCs, like OBDC, are trading at steep discounts as investors grow more skeptical of valuations and mounting stress in the private credit industry.
While institutional investors broadly continue to show strong appetite for private credit, retail investors and wealthy individuals have pulled away from the multi-trillion-dollar asset class as a barrage of negative headlines in recent months drew intense scrutiny to the industry.
Insurance giant AIG said on Friday it has pared back its private credit activity given the current market conditions.
Launched in 2016, OBDC is one of Blue Owl’s publicly traded business development companies. Its investor base spans institutional and retail clients.
BDCs are investment vehicles that offer investors ownership in a diversified pool of private credit assets.
Brown’s portfolio spans asset classes such as public equity, real assets and private equity. The endowment logged an investment return of 11.9% in fiscal 2025.
13-F filings detail what investment firms owned in U.S. stocks at the end of the previous quarter. They are backward-looking but are closely watched for indications of investment trends.
(Reporting by Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)
