Dell Family Office targets private credit secondaries amid market dislocation

DFO Management, the single-family office of Michael Dell, is actively positioning to deploy capital into private credit secondary market opportunities as dislocation across the $1.8 trillion asset class creates what the firm sees as a selective entry point. Alisa Mall, DFO’s Chief Investment Officer, outlined the firm’s thinking at a Bloomberg New Voices event in New York on March 24, 2026, pointing to rising redemption requests hitting private credit funds and growing investor concern over lending standards and exposure to businesses potentially vulnerable to AI disruption. Mall characterized much of the selling pressure as sentiment-driven rather than fundamentally driven, and identified a mismatch between investor expectations for liquidity and the illiquid structure of underlying private credit products as the key dynamic driving secondary market expansion. DFO has already been active in building its private credit exposure: the firm made an investment in 5C Investment Partners, a New York-based firm led by former Goldman Sachs professionals, as part of a broader reallocation of capital that followed the Broadcom acquisition of VMware in late 2023 — a transaction in which Michael Dell was a major stakeholder and received approximately $21.65 billion in proceeds. Mall indicated that default rates are expected to rise in 2027 and 2028, and that identifying businesses with durable fundamentals will be central to generating value as the private credit cycle turns.

About DFO Management: The Michael Dell single-family office

DFO Management, LLC is the single-family office of Michael Dell, founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, and his family. The firm was established in 1998 as MSD Capital, L.P., when Michael Dell recruited John C. Phelan and Glenn R. Fuhrman to manage his family’s wealth, and was restructured under its current name at the end of 2022. Headquartered in New York City with additional offices in West Palm Beach and Santa Monica, DFO pursues a multi-disciplinary investment strategy across public and private equities, credit, real estate, infrastructure, and alternative assets, with the mandate to maximize long-term capital appreciation for the Dell family. Notable historical transactions include participation in the $24 billion take-private of Dell Inc. in 2013, the $60 billion Dell–EMC merger in 2016, and the acquisition of air rights at Grand Central Terminal in New York in 2016, which were partially sold to JPMorgan two years later at a significant gain.

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Article Source: Tradingview, 30.03.2026

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