CR hires former Lloyd’s banker

The London and Berlin-headquartered advisory firm CR Investment Management (CR) has hired Andreas Costa to expand its non-performing loan and debt origination capabilities, according to a statement.

Costa, who previously worked at Lloyds and Anglo Irish Bank, has been appointed associate director and will be based in London, where he will be responsible for expanding subsidiary CR Financial Solutions’ (CRFS) debt and equity origination capabilities, as well as assisting in the underwriting and distribution of performing and non-performing loans.

Costa has 10 years of deal management and transaction experience and was responsible for providing case management and strategic advice to distressed exposures arising from the Lloyd’s legacy and inherited debt and equity positions. He played a key role in the bank’s recent portfolio deleveraging activities. Before that, Costa worked at Anglo Irish Bank where he was responsible for a portfolio of asset-backed and project finance exposures.

Costa’s new role at CRFS will involve partnering up non-bank lenders with borrowers seeking financing.

“Part of Andreas’ new role will be to syndicate within the non-bank lending community. That community is hungry for opportunities to deploy capital to borrowers seeking financing, and can leverage CR's broad sector and geographic origination capabilities,” Alex Rowbottom, director of CR, told Private Debt Investor.

CR plans to hire more people to originate deals and use its market knowledge, particularly in the European commercial real estate sector, to assist alternative lenders in underwriting loans.

CRFS has already worked with several third party providers of capital to underwrite more than €12 billion of loans in the last 12 months. Sources said that those loans underwritten include portfolios that were sold by the two banks Costa previously worked at such as Lloyd’s €1.5 billion Project Hampton and the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation’s (formerly Anglo Irish Bank) €7 billion Projects Rock and Salt – all books of pan-European commercial real estate. CR is said to have worked with the under-bidder on these books. However, CR declined to comment on this.

Opportunities for non-bank lenders are set to increase as large US private equity buyers of recent loan books are not typically long term holders of that debt.

“The volume of loan sales in the last 12 to 18 months has increased dramatically. Those buyers are generally looking for a fairly quick resolution so we see a great opportunity to assist new buyers seeking finance or existing borrowers looking to refinance. We can help them originate long term debt financing,” Rowbottom said.