As one looks at potential business opportunities emerging in 2014, it is impossible to overlook 2013, a year in which the markets signaled an outlook more positive than at any time since the onset of the financial crisis and the Great Recession in 2008.

In the United States, the S&P 500 Index rose more than 30 percent and commodity prices moved toward a more rational, less speculative balance. Energy independence in the U.S., a prospect unimaginable for decades, continued to emerge in 2013 as a clear medium-term possibility, as did the corresponding prospect for a real recovery in American manufacturing. Even Europe, while still mired in an atmosphere of slow growth compounded by legacy social welfare costs, is beginning to show signs of vitality for investors.

All told, there are many reasons to like the business and investment environment unfolding in 2014. Why then, in the face of this rising tide that should be lifting all boats, does bank lending to mid-size and larger businesses remain sluggish?

It is just this conundrum that provided the thematic focus for our recent colloquium, “Anatomy of the Loan Cycle,” which offered a stage for the views of senior lending executives from major commercial banks together with those of our finance-focused restructuring lawyers. The “Anatomy” event supplies the underlying fodder for this publication—the second in our Optimize series—focused on how the prism of credit and debt provides greater insight into the economy at large and how the many intertwined interests in the credit/debt formula can reap new returns.

This was a no-holds-barred examination of how major financial institutions currently view their markets and the factors likely to accelerate or impede those markets, all of which may point to solutions for breaking the obdurate credit logjam.

We hope you’ll agree that this edition of Optimize contributes to the dialogue in the industry, and we welcome your questions and comments.