(Bloomberg) -- Greg Coffey’s Kirkoswald Asset Management, best known for its liquid macro trading strategy, is breaking into the booming private-credit industry.
It has extended its first senior secured loan to Turkish textiles exporter Altinyildiz from the Kirkoswald Private Credit Fund that the firm is incubating as a new strategy to diversify its $8 billion investment-management business. The five-year final maturity and guaranteed $20 million loan is also the first offshore private-credit loan Altinyildiz has secured in its more-than-70-year history, the two companies said in a statement.
Kirkoswald is the latest entrant to the private-credit market, which has boomed into one of Wall Street’s fastest-growing sectors. It’s more than tripled in size in the past decade, to $1.7 trillion, as fund managers are increasingly drawn to investments that promise high returns as well as protection from mark-to-market losses.
Firms including Diameter Capital Partners, DWS Group, Pacific Investment Management Co., PGIM and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. are among those that have bought or are building private-credit businesses, seeking to benefit from the higher fees they can charge.
Coffey, who came out of retirement to start his hedge fund Kirkoswald in 2018, is in the process of diversifying his business and transforming the firm into an emerging-markets and macro-investing platform.
Kirkoswald is acquiring Emso Asset Management and has started a strategy that gives clients daily access to their money and complies with the European Union’s UCITS Directive.
The firm hired Alex von Sponeck and Simon Watt last year as portfolio managers for its private-credit fund. It’s not tied to Kirkoswald’s main macro hedge fund run by Coffey himself. The macro fund gained 2% during the first half of the year, Bloomberg News has reported.
--With assistance from Laura Benitez.
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