Hedge Fund Manager Lee Robinson Bets Against Insurers Over Private Credit Risks

IndustryMacro Impact 4
โดย Bloomberg·Read original
Summary · why it matters

Hedge fund manager Lee Robinson, who scored a 900% gain during the 2008 financial crisis, is now shorting insurers including Lincoln National, MetLife, and Berkshire Hathaway using credit default swaps, betting that their growing exposure to the $1.8 trillion private credit market will lead to writedowns. Robinson’s firm Altana is launching a new fund to protect against what he sees as an inevitable downturn in private credit, a cooling of AI hype, and declining liquidity. Net notional bets on US insurers’ CDS have risen to $5.5 billion by May 22 from under $4.9 billion at the end of last year, with trading volumes increasing and the cost of default protection starting to rise. A Moody’s analysis showed that a fifth of US life insurers’ $4 trillion of fixed-income holdings were in illiquid assets, mostly private credit, at the end of 2025, up from 18% a year earlier. Robinson says the current low volatility and tight credit spreads remind him of the calm before the subprime crisis, warning that even one stressed insurer could cause industry-wide ripples.

Impact on stocks 5

Financials▼ · 3 stocks
Lincoln National Corporation
LNC
▼ NegativeCapitalrelevance

Lincoln National is explicitly named as a target of short bets via CDS due to private credit exposure.

Aging Population▼ · 1 stocks
MetLife Inc
MET
▼ NegativeCapitalrelevance

MetLife is explicitly named as a target of short bets via CDS due to private credit exposure.

Energy Transition & Power Demand▼ · 1 stocks
Berkshire Hathaway Inc
BRK-B
▼ NegativeCapitalrelevance

Berkshire Hathaway is explicitly named as a target of short bets via CDS due to private credit exposure.

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