October ended with three upsets among active commercial lenders, a $63 billion loan with a guarantee stapled to it, and a #9 bank taking a championship without financing a single US building. Here’s who wrote the checks, who climbed, and what their deal mix says about how they’re thinking.
The Top Lender: four deals, two verticals, one very comfortable seat
Of all the active commercial lenders on The Lender Draft’s tape, Bank of America is my Top Lender of the Week. It wasn’t the biggest dollar number on the board, but it was the broadest week: four deals across Growth Capital and CRE.
| Deal | Vertical | Deal Size | BofA Role | Est. BofA Share* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic SPV (Broadcom XPU chips) | Growth Capital | $63.0B | Lead, first lien | ~$15.75B |
| Westrock Coffee refi | Growth Capital | $600M | Participant | ~$85.7M |
| Phillips Edison unsecured term loan | Growth Capital | $350M | Participant | ~$29.2M |
| Neoen Australian renewables | CRE (Intl) | $1.28B | Participant | ~$98.7M |
| Total | ~$15.96B |
*Equal split across listed lenders. The deal sheet didn’t carry a Lender Amounts column this week.
Look at what BofA chose, because the selection tells you more than the size. On the $63B deal, Broadcom provides residual value support equal to the whole first lien, per the deal sheet. So BofA’s tranche has the chipmaker itself promising the chips hold their value.
The WSJ reported that Broadcom’s CEO had to agree to higher rates and loan guarantees in last-minute talks to get the banks in. If that’s right, BofA got paid more and protected better for showing up first. Honestly, that’s how you lend into a market where the Growth Capital macro report has AI/tech borrowers on red alert.
The other three tell the same story in smaller print. Westrock’s facility was upsized from $500M to $600M on $737M of commitments, so demand was already proven. Phillips Edison owns grocery-anchored shopping centers, the one CRE category the CRE macro report rates stable. BofA spent the week picking seats with a seatbelt.
The matchups: three upsets and one judgment call
If you’re new here, every week we pair lenders head-to-head in each vertical, and whoever has the better week wins. October was the tournament month, and all three finals went to the lower seed.
Citi over JPMorgan (Growth Capital). This was #2 YTD against #1, and Citi won going away: about $20.9B* on three deals against roughly $1.7B* for JPMorgan. Most of JPMorgan’s number is its share of Aramco’s $10B revolver, which the sheet says isn’t signed yet. Citi moves to #2 YTD and takes the Growth Capital championship.
Citi’s most revealing deal was the smallest of its three. It gave Nebius a $3.5B facility for 364 days at SOFR + 2.75%, stepping up to 3.50%, per the release. That’s the same week Elon Musk said neoclouds face a shakeout. Citi lent anyway, short-dated and with a built-in rent hike.
Societe Generale over JPMorgan (CRE). JPMorgan didn’t post a CRE deal. SocGen took two international slices, Neoen in Australia and Giga Storage’s battery project in Germany, about $142M* combined. That’s #9 YTD beating #2, and SocGen’s second straight win over a big US bank after beating Citi last week. Both checks went to batteries and grids, which tells you where its CRE desk wants to be right now.
SLR Business Credit over Southstar Capital (ABL, called). Neither lender closed a deal. I gave it to SLR because its sister desk, SLR Healthcare ABL, closed a $25M revolver for an oncology provider with 100+ clinics across five states. The ABL macro report’s stress list is tech, media and Middle East receivables, and healthcare A/R isn’t on it. Southstar still owns #1 YTD with 49 deals, so this one deserves an asterisk, and I’m putting it there myself.
Who’s climbing, who’s slipping in the lender rankings
The YTD lender rankings moved this week, and the active commercial lenders who climbed have a pattern.
Rising: Among growth capital lenders, Blackstone jumped 9 spots to #23 in Growth Capital, on its sole second-lien role in the Anthropic SPV. Among asset-based lenders, Eldridge climbed 5 to #16 and Wingspire climbed 3 to #11, both off the $363M IREN GPU financing. On the commercial real estate lenders’ board, PCCP rose 4 to #21 on three loans: two multifamily construction loans and an industrial refi. Madison Realty rose 2 to #16 off its $463M St. Regis Residences loan in Sunny Isles Beach.
Rosenthal is the quiet one. It moved up to #2 in ABL on six equipment deals totaling $64.5M, half of them for cloud and data center gear. It announced them as a quarterly roundup, and the AI angle got lost next to the $63B headlines.
Slipping: BofA dropped from #2 to #3 in Growth Capital the same week it was my Top Lender, because Citi’s dollars passed it. eCapital fell to #3 in ABL as Rosenthal moved up to #2 on six equipment deals. Monroe Capital fell 2 spots to #12 in Growth Capital, and Nuveen dropped 2 to #13 in CRE.
The Lender Draft Active Commercial Lenders That Moved
| Vertical | Lender | Rank | Coinciding Deal |
|---|---|---|---|
| CRE | PCCP | #21 (Up 4 from rank 25) | Ballantine Phase II, Newark $130M; Crossings Boulevard, Spring Hill $71M; Palm Gateway Logistics refi, Mesa $68.3M |
| CRE | Madison Realty Capital | #16 (Up 2 from rank 18) | St. Regis Residences, Sunny Isles Beach $463M construction loan |
| CRE | Nuveen | #13 (Down 2 from rank 11) | No confirmed CRE deal this week; coinciding deal not identified |
| ABL | Eldridge Capital Management | #16 (Up 5 from rank 21) | IREN GPU equipment financing $363M (participant) |
| ABL | Wingspire Capital | #11 (Up 3 from rank 14) | IREN GPU equipment financing $363M (lead) |
| ABL | Rosenthal Capital Group | #2 (Up 1 from rank 3) | Six equipment financings, $64.5M total (three cloud and data center lines, $49M) |
| ABL | eCapital | #3 (Down 1 from rank 2) | Community hospital receivables $12M; freight factoring $1.25M |
| GC | Blackstone | #23 (Up 9 from rank 32) | Anthropic SPV $63B (sole second-lien provider) |
| GC | Citigroup | #2 (Up 1 from rank 3) | Anthropic SPV $63B (first lien); Nebius $3.5B (International GC) |
| GC | Bank of America | #3 (Down 1 from rank 2) | Anthropic SPV $63B (first-lien lead); Westrock Coffee $600M; Phillips Edison $350M |
| GC | Monroe Capital | #12 (Down 2 from rank 10) | No confirmed GC deal this week; coinciding deal not identified |
What the deal mix says about the credit box:
- Silver Point joined two GPU-backed deals in one week (IREN and NexGen Cloud). It’s lending against the chip itself.
- PCCP keeps writing construction loans for apartments in places with tight supply. Its Newark lender said the Ironbound neighborhood has run around 3% vacancy for ten years, per the release.
- TYKO, one of the private credit lenders backed by big money (Elliott Management per the release), wrote Florida’s largest construction loan ever, $817M, against a condo project with more than $500M in presales.
October champions: the most active lenders of October 2026
- CRE: Societe Generale. Two weeks, two wins over big US banks, zero US buildings.
- Growth Capital: Citi. ~$20.9B* in the final week. JPMorgan still leads the YTD table, and it’ll be looking at Citi’s trophy until spring.
- ABL: SLR Business Credit. Beat Oxford in week three and Southstar in the final. Southstar’s 49 deals buy a lot of respect and no October hardware.
So what for you
If you’re a borrower, the active commercial lenders winning right now share one habit: they want somebody else’s balance sheet behind yours. That can be a guarantee, presales, a contract with an investment-grade customer, or collateral that holds value. Show up with one of those and the money is there. Show up without one and expect a one-year term with a step-up. That’s the pattern I’ll keep scoring among active commercial lenders as November starts.
Counts reflect closed financings announced October 20 to 26, 2026 and tracked by The Lender Draft. Amounts are as announced; multi-lender shares are equal-split estimates where the lender breakdown wasn’t disclosed.
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