CVC Credit Partners bolsters its UK team

Stuart Levitt has joined the debt arm of buyout group CVC Capital Partners,  to focus on the group’s European trading activities, while Julia Agafonova has joined to lead the European operations team.

Levitt has been named as managing director and will be responsible for managing credit sourcing, origination and trading. Levitt was previously senior originator at UBS and Cantor Fitzgerald. Prior to that, he spent eight years with Credit Suisse managing and trading stressed and distressed credit assets.

Agafonova joins the firm as director of fund administration and will be responsible for executing the firm’s European financial operations.

Agafonova was previously head of operations and business administration at debt advisory firm Chalkhill Partners, and has 15 years experience in trade settlement support of credit derivatives, fixed income and foreign exchange instruments.

Both Levitt and Agafonova will be based in the London office, and will report to Marc Boughton, chief executive of CVC Credit Partners.

In February, the firm announced it would expand its product offering across US leveraged loans, European mezzanine loans and high yield bonds. That same month, Steve Hickey, chief risk officer at CVC Credit Partners (CVCCP), lured two former colleagues, Mark DeNatale and Scott Bynum, from investment bank Goldman Sachs to CVCCP. Hickey joined CVCCP from Goldman in April last year.

CVCCP was launched as CVC Cordatus in 2006 and has since expanded rapidly. Last year, CVC Capital Partners sold a 10 percent stake in itself to a trio of sovereign wealth funds, proceeds from which were used to expand the credit business. In addition, the firm announced a tie-up with US manager Resource America to combine Apidos Capital Management with CVC Cordatus last June.