Ares Management, a global alternative investment manager, has raised approximately $1.5 billion of capital for Ares Direct Lending’s dedicated specialty healthcare strategy, inclusive of the final closing of the inaugural Ares Specialty Healthcare Fund (ASH or the Fund) and anticipated leverage.
Through ASH, Ares seeks to support sponsored and non-sponsored specialty healthcare companies by providing flexible capital in directly originated first lien, second lien, mezzanine, preferred equity and non-control equity opportunities. The Fund focuses on public and private companies around the world and across five specialized sub-sectors, including pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, medical technologies, tools and diagnostics, specialty services and healthcare IT. In addition to its dedicated 11-member investment team, ASH benefits from a 12-member Industry Advisory Board, comprising seasoned specialty healthcare executives, who bring differentiated perspectives and operational depth.
“The final close of our inaugural ASH fund reflects the strength of our dedicated and tenured team, the depth of our healthcare industry experience and our demonstrated ability to provide creative capital solutions to meet the needs of businesses in an evolving market,” said Douglas Dieter, Dr.P.H., co-head of Ares Specialty Healthcare. “As a scaled manager with longstanding relationships across both the financial sponsor and the healthcare markets, Ares is well positioned to support private and public companies through various stages of growth and transformation. We appreciate the strong support and confidence from our global investor base.”
“Specialty healthcare continues to benefit from secular tailwinds that are driving robust origination activity and the need for capital formation,” said Raj Chudgar, co-head of Ares Specialty Healthcare. “As we look to capitalize on these compelling growth dynamics, we continue to leverage the scale and track record of Ares’ leading Direct Lending platform to source proprietary deal flow. Importantly, we remain steadfast in our credit-first investment approach — selectively investing in opportunities that align with our focus on building a diversified portfolio of high-quality businesses. We are pleased to have made investments in 28 portfolio companies to date, and we look forward to the exciting opportunities ahead.”
ASH benefits from the scale and capabilities of Ares’ global Direct Lending platform, which had more than 390 investment professionals, over two decades of experience investing in healthcare businesses and approximately $56 billion deployed in the healthcare sector as of June 30, 2025.
