The annual Milken Institute Global Conference took place at the Beverly Hills Hilton last week, attracting thousands of power players in both private markets and public service sectors from around the world.

The speaker roster was stacked – even Usher couldn’t score a headliner spot at the conference. 

Featured guests include Argentina’s recently elected President Javier Milei, David Beckham and SpaceX’s Elon Musk.

Los Angeles’s own financial-world heavyweights expressed concern about increased stress on debt loads. The conference began just days after the Federal Reserve signaled lending rates would remain elevated as inflation proves sticky, meaning some American companies will struggle with existing credit lines.

Danielle Poli, a portfolio manager with Downtown-based Oaktree Capital Management’s global credit strategy, said it could get ugly if companies can’t meet their debt obligations as maturity deadlines near.

“Many of these companies are burdened with excessive leverage with holes in their covenants like Swiss cheese,” she said during a panel about private credit.

Mike Gitlin, the chief executive of Downtown-based Capital Group, the largest money management firm in Los Angeles, spoke alongside the chair of the Capital Market Authority of Saudi Arabia and Harvey Schwartz, the chief executive of the Carlyle Group.

Gitlin said his concern about private credit doesn’t reside with legacy players such as his own firm. He said risk comes when smaller, less-experienced players buy into illiquid assets.

“If I had a concern about private credit, it would be the amount of money chasing an asset class where you need a really strong infrastructure to do it well,” Gitlin said. “It requires hundreds of people, not 10 people and a Bloomberg machine.”

Anne Walsh, the chief investment officer for Guggenheim Partners, which has an office in Santa Monica, spoke on how this current economic moment stands apart from historic cycles.

As the U.S. experiences what she called the “Covid echo” from pandemic-era stimulus, this downtown has been extended as yield curves have remain inverted and economic indexes have pointed negative for almost two years.

“We are still living in a post-Covid economy and market,” Walsh said. “I think that is different this time and we’re seeing the overhang of it.”

The event is hosted annually by the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute, a nonprofit think tank founded by billionaire Michael Milken in 1991.