Call for Papers: Special Issue on Private Debt
Review of Corporate Finance
Special Issue editors: Profs. Susanne Espenlaub & Arif Khurshed
Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester
The Review of Corporate Finance is pleased to announce a special issue on Private Debt. Private debt is a form of debt financing offered by non-bank lenders that is not issued or traded within traditional public markets. It has become an increasingly important source of corporate financing, influencing firms’ capital structure, investment decisions, and governance mechanisms. This special issue seeks to advance the understanding of private debt’s role in corporate finance by inviting high-quality theoretical and empirical research on the topic.
We welcome submissions that explore various aspects of private debt, including but not limited to:
The Role of Private Debt in Corporate Financing: How firms utilize private debt relative to traditional bank loans and public debt markets.
Private Debt and Corporate Governance: The impact of private lenders on firm decision-making, monitoring, and governance structures.
Risk and Performance in Private Debt Markets: Credit risk assessment, use of synthetic risk techniques (SRTs) in private debt markets, default rates, and the resilience of private debt investments especially during economic downturns.
Private Debt Funds and Institutional Investors: The rise of private debt funds, their investment strategies, and their influence on corporate finance.
Covenants and Contracting in Private Debt: How contractual terms in private lending impact borrower behaviour and risk management.
Private Debt in Emerging Markets: The role of private lending in financing firms in developing economies and the associated risks and opportunities.
Regulatory and Legal Aspects: The evolving regulatory landscape for private debt and its implications for firms and investors.
Sustainability and ESG in Private Debt: The role of private lenders in financing sustainable and impact-driven projects.
Technological Disruptions in Private Lending: The influence of fintech, blockchain, and AI-driven credit assessments on private debt markets.
We encourage submissions that provide novel insights into these topics using rigorous empirical analysis or theoretical modelling. Papers should contribute to the literature on corporate finance by offering new perspectives on private debt’s impact on firm behaviour, investor strategies, and financial markets.
Submission Guidelines:
Manuscripts should be submitted through the journal’s online submission system https://rcf.manuscriptmanager.net/. The submission instructions are online here https://www.nowpublishers.com/Journal/AuthorInstructions/RCF.
All submissions will undergo the journal’s usual peer review process. The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2026. For inquiries, please contact the special issue editors:
Profs. Susanne Espenlaub & Arif Khurshed
Susanne.Espenlaub@manchester.ac.uk
Arif.Khurshed@manchester.ac.uk
About RCF
RCF is published by Now Publishers. Now publishes papers as Green OA: articles are published under the terms of a non-commercial Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. If you cite the original work, you can use the work in subsequent material (e.g., develop or reprint it in a book). It allows you to maintain your work in open access, consistent with most granting body requirements.
RCF prints papers in hard and soft copies. The first issue has just been published - online here:
https://www.nowpublishers.com/RCF
In addition to the official page at Now Publishers, the editors maintain a personal journal page, which has details on the scope of the journal, editors and associate editors, forthcoming papers and associated conferences:
https://sites.google.com/view/review-of-corporate-finance/home?authuser=0
RCF has been accepted into Scopus and will have its first official impact factor in 2025. In the meantime, impact factors from Google Scholar are as follows:
3-Year 2-Year 2-Year
2024 2023 2024
6.29 7.34 4.49
• From published papers (not counting working papers)
• 3-year: based on cites in 2024 for 2021 – 2023 papers/count of 2001 – 2003 papers
• 2023: based on cites in 2023 for 2021 & 2022 papers
• 2024: adjusted for 11 months, based on cites as at Dec 1, 2024, for papers in 2022 & 2023.