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A loan to Guggenheim Partners’ $367bn asset management division has fallen into distressed territory as executives failed to assuage investors’ worries over the turmoil in chief executive Mark Walter’s business empire.
The $1.2bn loan was quoted at 78 cents on the dollar on Thursday, down from 96 cents at the end of last week. Trading activity on the loan has become one of the most important gauges of market sentiment on the privately held investment firm given it has no quoted stock price.
The decline in the loan’s price follows a hastily arranged call on Wednesday between senior executives at Guggenheim’s asset management division, known as Guggenheim Investments, and the group’s creditors.
It comes as Walter’s financial holdings have come under pressure after two insurance entities controlled by the billionaire’s TWG Group disclosed that US prosecutors were investigating whether they properly labelled assets tied to other parts of the financier’s sprawling business empire. Guggenheim is a separate entity from TWG but both are led by Walter.
Wednesday’s call, which was led by Guggenheim Investments president Dina DiLorenzo, was organised to review the financial health of GIH Borrower, a vehicle affiliated with the asset manager, which took out the loan, according to people familiar with the matter.
Executives told lenders on the call that they were not aware of any active probe into Guggenheim Investments connected to the investigation into the TWG-backed insurers, one of the people said.
They also discussed Guggenheim Private Investments, the unit that advises clients on private credit deals, including a 2025 whistleblower report relating to the unit and questions over how it recognised revenue.
The firm said in a statement that it had provided the whistleblower allegations to its external auditor, which later “issued unqualified audit opinions for the relevant consolidated financial statements for audit years 2024 and 2025”.
GIH Borrower did not include advisory fees accrued by the private investments unit in its second-quarter results, resulting in a sharp drop in revenues and profits compared with a year earlier.
The executives told creditors that two of Guggenheim Private Investments’ four clients were affiliated with Walter’s wider businesses. They noted that Delaware Life and Clear Spring, the TWG-backed insurers that were the subject of an investigation by federal prosecutors, were not among its clients.
They also said that the GIH Borrower was expected to report $165mn in revenues from the Guggenheim Private Investments unit for 2026, including $120mn in the third quarter, but refrained from providing 2027 guidance.
The decision not to provide an outlook for next year has prompted concerns among some creditors, who are attempting to parse whether the revenues for Guggenheim Private Investments will persist into the future and the fees the asset manager will be able to generate, lenders said. Bloomberg earlier reported on some of the contents of the call.
Guggenheim Partners declined to comment on the call. TWG has previously said that it was “aware of and co-operating with the investigation”.
The scrutiny of Guggenheim comes after TWG’s Delaware Life and Clear Spring Life said that they had given $20bn of loans to companies with ties to Walter. The disclosures came after the two insurers said in July that they had been subpoenaed by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Delaware Life said on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement to exchange up to $6.5bn in assets linked to TWG corporate affiliates for unrelated investments.
Walter has been accelerating efforts to raise cash in recent weeks.
The 66-year-old billionaire recently agreed to sell his majority stake in the NBA basketball team LA Lakers at a $12.5bn valuation and has been in talks to sell a minority stake in Chelsea Football Club, the English Premier League team. Walter also co-owns the US Major League Baseball team the LA Dodgers.
