We are very pleased to welcome Linda Filardi as a counsel to Cadwalader’s Fund Finance Group in New York. Linda's practice focuses on leveraged finance, with an emphasis on sponsor acquisition finance and fund finance, including NAV facilities. Linda has spent a considerable portion of her career in senior in-house legal positions for major financial institutions, including, most recently, as Senior Director and Associate General Counsel at Capital One Bank, where she was responsible for legal management of the Financial Institutions Group, Diversified Industries, Regional Banking and Municipal Finance. You can read more about Linda's experience and background here.
When we think about parties to a subscription credit facility (the “Facility”), all eyes are generally on the fund and the general partner (the “GP”), but the investment manager (the “Manager”) is also a party to watch. For the reasons explained here, the role of the Manager can vary from deal to deal, and, depending on the terms of the fund documents, it can create risk for the Facility lender in a subscription deal. Here we will break down those risks and how incorporating certain terms into your credit agreement can mitigate these risks.
The Wall Street Journal set the stage well for Q2 private funds manager earnings season with its “Buyout Firms Court Fresh Money” story published on July 19. While fundraising numbers took a beating in 1H 2022, the number of funds in the market and aggregate fundraising targets in the pipeline represent a remarkable increase over last year. The story touches on a number of key themes for the moment.
Earnings season for alternative asset managers is underway and should provide a window into the private market outlook for the second half. Earnings, of course, shine the spotlight on the large diversified platforms, a group that generally proves more resilient to challenging market conditions. The first data point came in yesterday when Blackstone reported Q2 fundraising, deployment, and realization totals that defied the broader industry slowdown.
New to fund finance or know someone who is? Here’s an updated guide to primers we’ve previously published in Fund Finance Friday.
Walkers this week broadcasted a podcast as part of its “We Talk Banking and Finance Series” hosted by Julia Keppe and Alice Wight on the Fund Finance Association’s European Symposium. To listen, click here.
NLC, an independent alternative Fund Finance lender, is looking to add a Senior Associate or a VP to its team.
Pacific Western Bank is looking for a Vice President to join its Fund Finance Group in the Boston office.
With communication avenues evolving and remote options only increasing, we certainly aren’t going back to the “good old days” of all-hands page flips and in-person closings. Combine that with Fax Rooms and FedEx deadlines, while certainly “old,” were those days even “good”? Arguably, no – traveling across the continent to closings lugging file briefcases while worried that your documents (on disk) might be destroyed by airport metal detectors isn’t something I want to go back to. Don’t worry. This isn’t a collection of “Back in my day, I walked to the courthouse uphill, both ways – in the snow” stories. I’m not interested in going back to the “good old days.” However, that isn’t to say that there weren’t some positives from those days that we should try and salvage or recreate that may make our jobs easier and even provide a smile later in our careers.
We are often asked by our clients: “What are you seeing? Anything interesting in the market on your side?” Our answer, as Cayman counsel, is more often than not that we are a ship floating in a tide and what they see as trends in the U.S. fund structuring and fund finance market will (or already have) washed up on our shores. One such trend that we continue to see progress in the market is in the confluence of the private equity and insurance sectors. This courtship is taking a variety of forms, but as private equity sponsors continue to look towards the vast reservoir of investable capital available in the insurance market, and insurers look back across the river at the stellar returns of such private equity sponsors, we are increasingly seeing the use of rated note feeders established as Cayman Islands limited liability companies (LLCs) or exempted limited partnerships (ELPs) to bridge the accessibility gap between insurers and private equity funds.
On July 11, the Alternative Reference Rates Committee (the “ARRC”) published a “Playbook” to assist market participants in transitioning their legacy LIBOR contracts to an alternative rate by June 30, 2023. Cadwalader's LIBOR transition team attorneys summarize here the steps that the ARRC recommends for the successful implementation of fallbacks in legacy LIBOR contracts.