Global credit specialist CIFC, which launched a European office in London last year, has completed the first phase of its UK research team recruitment with the appointment of four new hires.

Rinse Terpstra has joined from Chenavari Investment Managers where he worked as a senior investment analyst focusing on CLOs. He has more than 12 years of leveraged loan and high yield credit experience in Western and Central Eastern Europe as well as Turkey.

Zoltan Paller has joined from UBS where he focused on leveraged finance and direct lending opportunities in the EMEA region. Prior to UBS, he held positions in the Corporate Credit team of Morgan Stanley in Budapest and Fitch in London.

Max Elliott-Taylor has joined from Investcorp Credit Management in London where he was an associate in the credit research team investing in leveraged loans and high yield bonds for five years.

Alessandro Garello Cantoni has joined from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he worked for five years focusing on Italian and Iberian markets and later leveraged finance origination in the EMEA region.

Their hires follow the recruitment last year of Managing Directors Joshua Hughes and Dan Robinson to open the London office and start building out the team.

“CIFC has a strong footprint in the US alternative credit space and many of the team in New York have lots of experience themselves working in European markets, but they said when they launched in London that they would commit serious investment to this effort, with a team on the ground. These hires, complemented by the recruitment of compliance and administration support, show that the business is serious in its ambitions to establish a credible and meaningful presence in Europe for the long-term,” said Head of European Marketing Joshua Hughes.

Since CIFC unveiled its European strategy in May last year it has launched a UCITS structured credit fund, which has $85 million AUM, and it just priced its debut European CLO, the €407.00 million CIFC European Funding CLO I, through Deutsche Bank.

Founded in 2005, New York-based CIFC is a credit specialist with more than $24 billion of assets under management, specializing in corporate and structured credit strategies.