Ares Management has placed withdrawal limits on its flagship private credit fund for another quarter, after a filing released Thursday showed redemption requests increased during the second quarter.
Shareholders attempted to withdraw 14.4% of shares from the $22.6 billion Ares Strategic Income Fund, known as ASIF, during the second quarter — up from 11.6% the quarter before. The fund restricted withdrawals to 5% of shares, which is the standard cap for this type of investment vehicle.
Wealthy investors have been pulling money out of non-traded private credit funds in recent months, driven by concerns over lending standards and uncertainty about how heavily indebted software companies will handle disruption from artificial intelligence.
According to investment bank Robert A. Stanger, investors collectively withdrew $12.9 billion from private credit funds catering to wealthy individuals during the first five months of 2026.
ASIF noted that the bulk of withdrawal requests came from a small number of non-U.S. institutions and family offices — a group representing less than 1% of the fund’s more than 20,000 shareholders — yet that group accounted for nearly half of second-quarter redemption requests.
Competitor Apollo has similarly reported that withdrawal requests at its $26 billion private credit fund have eased among U.S. investors while rising from international clients.
Nearly two-thirds of the repurchase requests at ASIF came from investors who had already submitted withdrawal requests in the previous quarter.
TD Cowen analyst Bill Katz offered a measured take on the update, saying, “Optically, not a great update; however, the devil is in the details, and we are quite encouraged by the finer disclosure.” He pointed out that the pattern of requests does not indicate broad investor panic, and that repeat requesters suggest redemption pressure is not growing.
Among U.S. private wealth investors — ASIF’s largest group of shareholders — withdrawal requests represented just 2.4% of shares and dropped 35% compared to the prior quarter. That same segment also made up nearly half of the fund’s second-quarter inflows.
CEO Michael Arougheti said earlier this month that wealthy U.S. individuals were actually increasing their exposure to alternative investments and were not redeeming shares at the pace markets had anticipated.
ASIF, which launched in 2022, reported that its Class I shares have produced an annualized total return of 10.27% since the fund began — a 187-basis-point premium over broadly syndicated bank loans.
