Debt advisers: helpful guides or another layer of intermediation?

Specialist advisers are playing an increasingly important role in debt markets, especially the private markets. They add another layer between creditor and borrower, but issuers believe they more than pay their way, intermediating an illiquid and opaque market and making sure borrowers, some of them in the market for the first time, can achieve their goals. Debt advisers can be two ex-bankers and a telephone, or may be housed in some of the largest and grandest professional services firms on the planet. What’s the future of the industry? Owen Sanderson finds out.