Global fixed income manager BlueBay Asset Management has further built its Direct Lending team with the appointments of Vincent Vitores (pictured) as head of Spain and Christophe Vulliez as head of France, for Direct Lending.
Reporting to Anthony Fobel, partner and head of private lending, Vulliez and Vitores will focus on creating and executing direct lending investments. They will also work on business development in their respective countries.
Commenting on the appointments, Fobel says: “A continuing shortage of supply of debt capital to small and medium sized businesses, coupled with increased demand for capital as business look to grow and expand, creates an attractive investment opportunity for BlueBay’s Direct Lending business.”
He adds that in the low interest rate environment, investors are likely to continue to allocate to higher yielding, more illiquid asset classes such as private lending.
Vitores joins from financial services company GE Capital where he worked in a number of roles, most recently as executive director in debt and equity special situations. He has also worked at investment manager 3i and BNP Paribas.
Vulliez joins from Ardian Private Debt where he was managing director in Paris. Prior to this he worked at Axa Investment Managers as a structured finance portfolio manager and in various roles at BNP Paribas.
BlueBay’s Direct Lending business provides lending solutions to European mid-market companies, with the aim of filling the finance gap created by reduced bank lending. To date, BlueBay Direct Lending has committed €1.3 billion in 26 private debt deals across the first two funds.
BlueBay manages over $60 billion (€53.4 billion) for institutions and high-net worth individuals, as at June 30, 2015. The asset management firm is wholly owned by Royal Bank of Canada and part of the RBC asset management division, RBC Global Asset Management group of businesses.
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