By Jack Pitcher and Corinne Ramey
Federal prosecutors are probing a BlackRock private-credit fund that surprised investors with a sharp write-down of its loan portfolio earlier this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Manhattan U.S. attorney's office is investigating the valuation practices of BlackRock's publicly traded TCP Capital fund, the people said. Bloomberg News earlier reported on the probe.
The fund's poor performance has been a sore spot for BlackRock, though its roughly $350 million market value represents a negligible portion of the assets of the world's largest investment firm. In January, the fund disclosed a 19% decline in the net asset value of the investments it owns, writing down the value of a number of loans that its managers had marked at or near cost just a few months earlier.
Shares of the fund have dropped 45% over the past year, and trade well below the stated net asset value -- the managers' estimate of what the portfolio is worth.
Because many private loans rarely or never change hands, marking their fair value is a subjective exercise. Many managers use third-party valuation firms to come up with estimates, which are typically reported quarterly by private-credit funds that are marketed to individual investors.
Skepticism over those valuations began to bubble up last year, prompting investors in public funds like BlackRock's to sell shares, and investors in so-called nontraded private credit funds -- a larger segment of the market -- to ask managers for their money back en masse.
Apollo Global Management said this month it would start to offer investors daily valuations for its private-credit funds in an effort to limit concerns about the opacity.
Write to Jack Pitcher at jack.pitcher@wsj.com and Corinne Ramey at corinne.ramey@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 15, 2026 18:33 ET (22:33 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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