Angelo Gordon asset-based fund closes on $1bn

Angelo Gordon has announced the final close of its AG Asset Based Credit Fund with more than $1 billion of commitments, beating a target of $800 million. This is the third consecutive fund that Angelo Gordon has closed above its target.

The fund received commitments both from existing Angelo Gordon clients and from new institutional investors, the firm said in a statement. More than half of the assets at final close came from newcomers. The firm accordingly sees this as a valuable broadening of its base of limited partners.

The fund focuses on asset-backed specialty private credit with many types of collateral, including consumer and real assets, with the idea of filling financing gaps, offering financing solutions to borrowers. In this way, it enhances the scale of Angelo Gordon’s global credit platform, which now has $55 billion in assets across corporate credit, lending and structured strategies.

In May 2023, TPG agreed to acquire Angelo Gordon for $2.7 billion, in a deal expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2023. That transaction has come about precisely because TPG wants greater exposure to credit investing. TPG, a private equity firm with $135 billion in assets under management, was founded in 1992, only four years after Angelo Gordon, which means that both firms are, in the context of this rapidly growing market space, venerable.

The fund launched in November 2021, according to a person familiar with the matter. It also held its first close that month, though Angelo Gordon would not comment on the dollar amount for that first close.

In firm’s statement, TJ Durkin, head of structured credit and portfolio manager of the new fund, said: “We believe our creative, partnership-based approach, well established team, and deep structured credit investment capabilities best position us to help companies with strong upside potential receive the financing they require, while driving performance for our investors.”

Angelo Gordon was founded in 1988, by John M Angelo and Michael L Gordon, who had worked together at the arbitrage department of LF Rothschild. It is headquartered in New York, with offices elsewhere in the US and in Europe and Asia.

Angelo Gordon recently changed the way it calculates its AUM. Since May 31, 2023, it has excluded leverage. This means that it now states its AUM as approximately $53 billion. It formerly would have said the AUM was $73 billion as of December 31, 2022. But it says in its statement that this nominal move is not “any material change to the fund’s investment advisory business”.