Why $300 Billion in Company Debt Is Coming Due in 2028
Companies owned by private equity firms have about $300 billion in debt that starts coming due in 2028, and their owners are racing to extend many of those loans, The Wall Street Journal reported on October 27, 2026.
Private equity firms buy companies, often using a lot of borrowed money. The firm that owns the company is called the sponsor. When a loan reaches its final due date, the borrower has to pay it back in full. A cluster of loans due within a short window is called a maturity wall, and it works a bit like a row of bills all landing in the same month.
A borrower facing that deadline has three main options. It can refinance, which means taking out a new loan to pay off the old one. It can extend, which means asking lenders to push the due date back. Or it can pay down the principal, which is the original amount borrowed. The cost of each option depends heavily on market conditions when the deadline arrives. For a sponsor-backed company, an extension is usually the cheapest way to avoid being forced into a new loan at a bad time. The details matter, though. A higher interest margin, stricter rules in the loan agreement, or extra fees can make an extension expensive.
A Dow Jones headline, carried by Morningstar the same day, said the $300 billion falls within loans due in 2028 and 2029. So the pressure is spread across two years rather than hitting all at once. A longer schedule gives borrowers and lenders more time to negotiate. It also means a weak lending market in 2028 would affect a bigger share of the debt than a single year would.
Software companies keep showing up in the estimates. In September, the Journal reported that software firms account for about a third of the risky corporate loans due in 2028. "Risky" here means loans to companies with weaker credit, which pay higher interest to make up for the extra risk. In April, Bloomberg reported that more than $200 billion of this kind of technology debt comes due through 2028. In March, S&P Global Market Intelligence estimated roughly $386 billion of software debt maturing in 2028 and 2029, with about $80 billion maturing in 2026.
These numbers do not add up neatly. The Bloomberg figure covers technology borrowers in certain loan markets through 2028. The S&P figure covers software debt over two years. The Journal's one-third is a share of risky loans due in 2028, while the $300 billion headline covers private equity-backed companies in general. Adding or subtracting them would count some debts twice and leave others out. What they share is a direction: software makes up a large part of the debt coming due soon, and much of it falls in the years the wall covers.
The risk does not stop with big bank-style loans. Moody's has said that business development companies, or BDCs, face risk from the 2028 wall. BDCs are funds that lend directly to mostly private companies, and many hold loans whose interest rates move up and down with a benchmark rate. If a borrower extends on worse terms, the hit shows up in the fund's net asset value, which is the fund's total worth per share, and in the payouts it makes to investors. So people who have never met a private equity sponsor can still be affected if they own shares in a private credit fund.
In my view, the most useful way to follow this is to ask specific questions. How many 2028 loans get extended before their final year, and at what interest margin and new due date? How many are refinanced in public loan markets, and how many are handled privately? Do extensions bring in new cash from owners, or allow borrowers to pay interest in more loan rather than cash? And how are the software loans doing as their dates get closer, compared with the rest?
The $300 billion figure tells you where to look, but it does not tell you the outcome. That will be decided in the individual loan agreements. Once the extension terms are disclosed, they will show what the wall actually costs.
