TY - JOUR T1 - Investment-Grade Private Placement Loan Spreads JF - The Journal of Fixed Income SP - 19 LP - 34 DO - 10.3905/jfi.1999.319225 VL - 9 IS - 3 AU - Randolph L. Hood Y1 - 1999/12/31 UR - https://pm-research.com/content/9/3/19.abstract N2 - The private placement of securities by insurance companies represents a large but relatively unexplored category of investing. The author examines a sample of insurance company investment-grade-fixed-income private placements as reported to the American Council of Life Insurance for 1995 through 1998. The $97 billion in investments is similar to the public investment grade fixed-income market in terms of spread, but differs in a few special respects. Private spreads appear to track public spreads, but with a slight lag, perhaps because of institutional factors or pricing conventions. The spreads on investment -grade private placements are wider than those available in the public market. The wider spread is apparently due in part to extra monitoring costs and perhaps illiquidity. ER -