Odd Lots · Friday, July 31, 2026
Federal prosecutors are reportedly investigating Mark Walter's Guggenheim, particularly its affiliated insurers like Delaware Life. A revised financial disclosure revealed that 'affiliated assets' constituted 40% of Delaware Life's total assets, a significant increase from a previously reported 3-5%, raising concerns about transparency and potential regulatory arbitrage.
“But of course the irony is that maybe it's not so clear because it put out a revised financial disclosure saying that the number of affiliated assets on its balance sheet, so these are assets that come basically via Guggenheim or that are under common control by Guggenheim. They had reported them previously as something like three to five percent of Delaware Life and Clear whatever total assets, and then they went back as a result of this investigation and checked put out a revised statement, what do you think the proportion of affiliated assets is now? Tell me forty percent?”
“Yeah, so this is actually the real subject of the paper. As much as we talk about ratings, arbitrage and opacity of private credit assets and things like that, the point that you make is that because of the way that insurers are regulated and I guess administered when they go belly up, although they don't really go through traditional corporate bankruptcy proceedings, but the way they're dealt with if there's a failure is fundamentally different to the way banks are dealt with in our system. Talk about those differences for us.”