Principal
Ares Commercial Finance
“He was my first boss,” Reilly says. “He really taught me the business. I’m still running thoughts and ideas by him today.”
Reilly grew up seeing how the asset-based lending industry worked first-hand while his father worked in Citibank’s ABL group and then launched his own firm, Keltic Financial Services. Reilly interned at Keltic during his undergraduate years at the University of Colorado and then got his first job at the firm as a junior credit officer and analyst for the underwriting team.
In 2014, Ares Management acquired Keltic, altering Reilly’s career trajectory. Fortunately, Reilly was intimately involved in the transition, contributing to the team that put together the review forms for the acquisition while helping Ares Commercial Finance get comfortable with the business and its underwriting, operations and portfolio processes.
“That tombstone still sits on my desk and I read it constantly,” Reilly says. “When I was 20-years-old, those words really didn’t mean a lot to me, but now, after being in the industry for 10 years, I’ve realized that those bullet points have really influenced my business decisions greatly.”
At Ares Commercial Finance, Reilly uses those lessons and the many others he’s learned during his decade in the business to manage portfolio loans, underwrite transactions and focus on certain business development opportunities. He has also been involved in the hiring and recruitment of interns and analysts. Reilly has relished these disparate tasks, as they speak to how he has been empowered to define his own role.
“It was just a nice transition for me to go from small-ticket ABL to larger middle market transactions,” Reilly says.
“I believe I’m well rounded. I was able to learn the business from the bottom by starting in an operations role, then moving into portfolio then into underwriting,” Reilly says. “I’ve learned how to work with the owner operator who’s very new to ABL as well as the sophisticated sponsor who’s negotiated hundreds of credit agreements.”
“I’ve had a chance to look at hundreds of different businesses in all kinds of industries. I would say my favorite part of the ABL process is constantly learning about new businesses and industries,” Reilly says. “I think if I picked a career path in finance in which I specialized in one industry, I would’ve gotten bored by now.”
In addition to his role in helping Ares Commercial Finance close and fund deals, Reilly also has taken on mentoring responsibilities within the company, helping to guide junior team members as they start their own ABL journeys. Although he is still in the early part of his own career relatively speaking, Reilly knows that providing support is something anyone can and should do, even if its not officially part of their job description.
Reilly has made it a priority to go through transactions with junior staff members before they present to Ares Commercial Finance’s investment committee. In doing so, he helps them outline strengths and weaknesses of each deal while strategizing on recommendations for credit. After a deal is considered, Reilly then helps compare those pre-meeting recommendations with the actual decisions of the committee as background work for future deals. In addition to these types of hands-on initiatives, Reilly also urges junior people in the industry to ask questions frequently and to reach out to as many people and resources as possible to find answers.
