Sagard, a global alternative asset manager with over $27 billion of assets under management, launched a new Sagard CLO Equity Fund. The fund intends to invest in the equity tranche of future Sagard | HalseyPoint CLOs, which are a diversified pool of leveraged loans managed by Sagard | HalseyPoint, a CLO manager with a 25-year track record. The fund targets the equity tranche, the highest-return segment in a CLO structure. It aims to provide investors with quarterly cash flow while managing risk through diversification. The Sagard team and affiliates, along with major insurance players and other institutional investors, have committed $92.5 million in capital. The fund aims to raise an additional $157.5 million to reach a target size of $250 million.
“We are excited to partner with Lynn Hopton and Yvonne Stevens’ team at Sagard | HalseyPoint to offer our expertise to new investors in CLO equity. It’s a unique time to invest in this asset class,” Adam Vigna, co-founder and chief investment officer at Sagard, said. “In a leveraged loan market of about $1.5T, there are very few managers who not only have a deep grasp of market dynamics but also have built the sourcing relationships in the broadly syndicated loan market. We believe these qualities position us to consistently deliver potentially attractive returns.”
“We’re excited to see how the asset class has grown in recent years,” Lynn Hopton, co-founder and managing partner at Sagard | HalseyPoint, said. “With attractive loan prices in both secondary and new issue markets, and arbitrage opportunities still intact, this is a great time to develop a strong backing on the equity side. Our objective is to issue more CLOs every year, and to pass on the resulting pricing efficiency to our equity investors.”
