Wall Street banks, getting trounced by money managers in the battle for the high-fee business of financing risky companies, are setting up direct lending operations to fight back. Now Wall Street is trying to catch up with the upstarts, and it won’t be easy. They have to raise funds and hire staff, at a time when investors broadly seem less eager to pour money into the asset class. “Will banks do it as well?“ Not at first. As they hire people with experience they will. But they will have years to go before they can compete with the established big direct lenders,” commented Kristopher Ring, Debt Finance partner, when he spoke with Bloomberg.