The global syndicated loan market has been given new impetus after the slowdown during the worst years of the recent crisis. In recent times a new trend has become apparent with regard to the operators in this market, with institutional investors playing an ever more important role, as opposed to the banks that have traditionally dominated the market. This paper offers a brief introduction to the main features, contractual arrangements and players of syndicated loans, examines the structure and functions of syndicated loan consortiums in greater detail, and proposes their classification as a horizontal contractual business network. It also analyses their growing heterogeneous composition and concludes that some related goverance problems in the consortium could be fruitfully addressed from the business networks perspective.