A PDF glossary of syndicated loan market terms brought to you by Practical Law and the LSTA.

A Practice Note highlighting several key trends in the US loan market in the first half of 2026. Leveraged lending levels were more muted and highly bifurcated in the first half of the year amid economic uncertainty, geopolitical pressures, and AI-led disruption, particularly in the software sector. Convergence and competition between the broadly syndicated loan (BSL) market and private credit continued even as the private credit market experienced some stress.

This Note discusses other notable points, including the effectiveness of the 2022 Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Amendments in New York and the expected impact of the EU’s CRD VI on cross-border lending, the continued evolution of liability management transactions (LMTs), and ongoing negotiations around loan terms such as loan buyback provisions and EBITDA adjustments.

A Practice Note addressing the evolving legal framework for taking security interests in digital assets like cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This Practice Note focuses on the significant changes introduced by Article 12 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) and the related amendments to UCC Article 9 in the 2022 amendments to the UCC. It examines the processes for obtaining and perfecting security interests in the new collateral categories created by Article 12, including controllable electronic records (CERs), controllable accounts, and controllable payment intangibles.

This Practice Note explains how perfecting a security interest through control provides priority over competing claims and outlines new protections for transferees, such as the qualifying purchaser concept. It also explores the uncertainties for digital assets that do not fall under these new categories or are located in jurisdictions that have not yet adopted Article 12 and discusses the ongoing jurisdictional and regulatory risks facing the digital asset financing market.

A Practice Note providing an overview of payment-in-kind (PIK) interest, with particular focus on PIK toggles. This Note looks at the different formulations and specific characteristics of PIK interest, highlights negotiation and documentation considerations for practitioners, and introduces the concept of synthetic PIK.

An Expert Q&A that examines the structural fault lines and legal risks emerging in the $1.8 trillion private credit industry following recent high-profile disruptions. This Expert Q&A reframes these events as a market correction that could lead to healthier, more sustainable growth. It explores the key challenges facing the market, including the liquidity mismatch inherent in certain business development company (BDC) structures, the risks of back leverage, software sector concentration, and net asset value (NAV) opacity. The discussion also addresses the increasing scrutiny from investors and regulators and the cross-border complexities involving different US, UK, and EU regulatory frameworks, such as the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) and European Long-Term Investment Fund (ELTIF) 2.0. This resource offers practical guidance for private credit funds, private equity sponsors, and banks on navigating the current environment, identifying structural conflicts, and understanding the strategic shift toward asset-based lending and other growing substrategies

An overview of liability management transactions, including drop-down financings and uptiering transactions. This Note includes information about the structures, the implicated loan agreement provisions, and loan agreement blocker language.

A Practice Note that summarizes and compares key provisions from certain publicly available crypto-backed credit agreements from 2025. As the lending market adapts to the rise of bitcoin (BTC) and other digital assets, this Note examines the structure of loans in which cryptocurrency is pledged as collateral. It highlights the main areas of focus for lenders and borrowers, including mechanisms for collateral valuation, custody, and control. This Note summarizes different approaches to collateral eligibility, loan-to-value (LTV) monitoring, margin call triggers, and the roles of custodians and lending service providers (LSPs). It also explores how these agreements leverage the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) to perfect a lender’s security interest in digital collateral, providing valuable insights for parties navigating this evolving area of finance.

A Practice Note discussing the concept of fungibility of incremental term loans. It explains why achieving fungibility is important for creating a deeper and more liquid trading market, particularly in the term loan B market. It also highlights a common but often overlooked hurdle to true fungibility, calibrating amortization terms, and demonstrates how simplistic drafting of amortization provisions for  incremental debt can lead to economic differences between the new and original loan tranches, even when the stated rates are identical. The Note further examines how prior voluntary or mandatory prepayment events can introduce additional complexities to the amortization profile, creating another potential barrier to fungibility.