Scott Aleali and Jeff Maier released another episode of "Fund Fanatics" this week, featuring Angel Fierro and Rory Meyers, Co-Founders and Managing Partners of Aiga Capital Partners. This episode touches on the market opportunity for private capital with regard to ESG investing, the importance of climate change mitigation, and the significance of how DEI and ESG affect returns.
This week, Columbia Law School’s Empowering Women of Color organization hosted an in-person fall mixer, where students were provided the opportunity to mingle with attorneys.
Registration will be closing soon for Cadwalader's annual Finance Forum at the JW Marriott in Charlotte next Thursday, October 27. Programming will begin at 1:00 p.m. and continue throughout the afternoon, followed by a networking reception. Click here for a list of current panel topics and to register.
Fund finance expert Catharina von Finckenhagen has joined Travers Thorp Alberga as a partner in the Cayman Islands. Catharina is a dual-qualified Cayman Islands attorney and Luxembourg avocate, providing both combined and standalone Cayman Islands law and Luxembourg law advice from a U.S. time zone.
Silicon Valley Bank is seeking to hire Junior Relationship Managers for its Global Fund Banking team, with positions based in Austin, Chicago, San Francisco and New York.
We are increasingly hearing from bank and non-bank lenders looking for ways to de-risk either all or, more usually, a portion of their exposure under a particular facility. It is perhaps a symptom of the current economic climate that these requests are becoming more frequent, particularly with respect to structured NAV trades. Given this increased interest in the availability and typical operation of risk sharing arrangements, this week we are collaborating with Assia Damianova, a Special Counsel in our structured finance team who deals frequently with these products, to look at the options available to lenders in the European fund finance market.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated again how interconnected the political and financial worlds have become. For those of us in the private equity and finance worlds, it has also given rise to associated challenges posed by the Russia-related financial sanctions that have followed. In the fund finance market, these issues have arisen both for sponsors (who are now faced with issues around freezing the assets of sanctioned investors without being able to remove them) and lenders (some of whom have been faced with credit parties to their facilities who now have sanctioned investors in their LP roster).
This week, Diversity in Fund Finance hosted its annual teach-in event for Baruch College undergraduates in New York. Bankers and lawyers from the fund finance industry attended the event. Natasha Puri of Lloyds Bank and Nick Mitra of SG Americas Securities, LLC gave a presentation on the fund finance market generally and the nuts and bolts of a subscription financing transaction.
In September, KBRA’s Funds team attended Informa Connect’s SuperReturn conferences for Private Equity, Energy and Private Credit in New York and Global Secondaries Summit in London.
Fund Finance Partners and Ropes & Gray have co-authored an article titled, “NAV Financing: A Terrific Tool for Savvy Fund Sponsors.” The authors focus on NAV financing from the asset manager’s perspective, including reasons for asset managers to use NAV financing and some of the top business and legal points for asset managers and their investment vehicles in NAV financing transactions. Read it here.