leveraged-finance
(3)
Jefferies
How a 1962 Los Angeles block-trading desk turned into the last independent full-service investment bank standing between the boutiques and the giants.
9fin
9fin is a London-based, AI-native intelligence platform for the global debt markets. Founded in 2016 by former banker Steven Hunter and former engineer Huss El-Sheikh, it uses machine learning to extract structured data from dense financial documents and pairs that data with news, analytics, and AI-powered workflows. Its platform covers leveraged loans, high-yield bonds, distressed debt, CLOs, private credit, and asset-based finance, and is used by investment banks, asset managers, hedge funds, law firms, and advisors. In March 2026 the company raised a $170M Series C at a $1.3 billion valuation.
Forest Park Group
Forest Park Group is a San Mateo, California fintech building LoanOS, a private, permissioned blockchain platform that shrinks syndicated loan settlement from weeks to as little as T+1. Founded in 2019 by syndicated-loan veterans and distributed-computing engineers, the company targets the roughly 30,000 participants in the leveraged loan market, where deals routinely take 25+ days to settle and $92 billion in delayed-settlement exposure sits idle. By automating loan data flows through smart contracts and API-driven interfaces, LoanOS aims to make an illiquid, email-and-spreadsheet market behave more like a liquid one.