Points up front: Loan deal with 23 takes Griezmann to Barcelona
Soccer financing firm 23 Capital has been adding credit experts to its team and now has a CLO specialist captaining its capital markets effort, with former Guggenheim Securities co-head of ABS/CLO syndication Sreesha Vaman joining last month. The squad already features credit portfolio managers Sam Filer (ex-BMS Finance), David O’Connor (Mizuho) and Ardeshir Sorabjee (Deutsche Bank).

Credit funds at a glance
A round-up of fundraising and people moves in credit

Fund performance
A round-up of fund performance

Head of structured credit and CLO investments leaves Barings
One of the CLO industry's biggest names has left Barings, resulting in the firm appointing two co-managers for its structured credit investment group 

Minnesota pension slates $100 million for private credit
The pension fund has so far allocated $2.4 billion to private credit across 12 managers and 25 funds

Amundi Pioneer initiates marketing for structured credit interval fund
Amundi Pioneer Asset Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amundi, is in the market with a structured credit interval fund

Structured credit manager wins $300 million from Texas pension
The separately managed account will form part of the $30.3 billion pension fund's strategic credit mandate 

Carval fashions 'flexible' global multi-strategy credit hedge fund
The open-ended fund will focus on non-control strategies including corporate securities, liquidations, loan portfolios and structured credit 

Ellington finds Ucits success with mix of structured and synthetic
Fund managers are finding ample liquidity in the structured and synthetic credit market and this is helping them outperform in the Ucits fund universe.

Points up front: Cap wearer plays trump card in support of SRT
Such has been the success of Donald Trump’s “make America great again” caps that structured credit folks have started sporting their own versions. Santander’s Jeremy Hermant has been seen in the streets of London proudly wearing a cap with the motto “make SRT great again”. Hermant works in the significant risk transfer team and tells Creditflux that he has been campaigning for SRTs for the past few years.

Fund performance: Mercury rises as does credit fund performance

Carlyle switches to corp structure as credit portfolio grows 31%
Carlyle Group is set to become a full C corporation, moving away from its publicly traded partnership structure, amid global credit portfolio growing 31% year-on-year, according to the investment firm’s 2019 Q2 results  

BlueMountain lands senior credit trader in New York
BlueMountain has hired an experienced trader in New York to cover credit and special situations

GSO adds $10 billion to inflows with direct lending, structured credit and energy
Blackstone grew its credit assets under management to $139.3 billion, up 13% on a year ago, according to the firm's second quarter earnings release

Investor requirements rather than performance is driving ESG push: Creditflux survey
Only 14% of respondents to Creditflux's global credit ESG survey said performance was the main reason they were adopting envoronmental, social and governance-themed strategies

CLO investors should be looking at CSOs

Investments in CSOs can be more fruitful than in CLOs

They said it: "I saw a CLO OM which ran 484 pages"
At Creditflux’s Credit Dimensions event, JP Morgan’s Zaheen Mir argues that CSOs are simpler to understand than CLOs

Credit funds at a glance

Fund performance

Pretium targets $500 million for structured credit fund
Pretium Structured Credit Opportunities Fund was registered with US regulators on Monday 

Natixis prices second muni-project securitisation of year
Energy Efficient Equity (E3) priced its inaugural 'property-assessed clean energy' (Pace) deal today via Natixis    

Two structured finance partners join Clifford Chance in New York
Two structured finance partners have joined Clifford Chance’s structured finance practice in New York, according to a statement from the law firm

Arrival of five-year bespokes draws in CLO investors
Synthetic bespoke tranches are undergoing a major shift, with dealers projecting five-year business to supersede previously dominant shorter tenors by the end of 2019.