ICG brings Credos Capital team on board

ICG has hired Sridhar Bearelly, Jesper Poulsen and Vincent Charles-Gervais, the founders of structured credit specialist Credos Capital.

The trio join Simon Peatfield, who oversees ICG’s existing structured credit portfolio.

The combined team will be helmed by Bearelly, ICG said in a statement confirming the appointments, and will report to Dagmar Kent Kershaw, head of credit fund management.

As part of the deal, ICG has acquired Credos’ proprietary alternative credit fund platform. The new ‘Alternative Credit’ team will focus on non-standardised portfolio opportunities arising from the transition of credit markets away from traditional bank lending, ICG said.

Kent Kershaw told Private Debt Investor that the team had been known to ICG for many years. “They are a very experienced, very senior team who bring a huge amount of scale to our existing structured credit business,” she said. “We’ve seen so much demand from investors in the structured and alternative credit space that bringing them on board made absolute sense.”

The trio founded Credos Capital in 2012, having worked together previously at ZAIS Group. Bearelly was head of global corporate investments at ZAIS, overseeing a team which managed more than $3 billion in alternative credit instruments. Prior to joining ZAIS in 2007, he was managing director and global head of structured syndicate at Lehman Brothers.

Poulson was executive director of structured credit and emerging markets structuring at Lehman until 2008, when he moved to Nomura before joining ZAIS as a senior portfolio manager within the global corporate investment team.

Charles-Gervais began his career in structured finance at AXA Investment Managers in France in 2003, before joining Lehman in 2006, before moving to ZAIS in 2008.

Commenting in the statement, Bearelly said: “We were always open-minded about partnering up with an existing asset manager, but we were very clear about what that partner should be able to provide. ICG is a long established, well capitalised asset manager with an excellent reputation with investors and a credit investment philosophy very closely aligned with our own principles of investing. There are very few firms that can offer this and we are extremely excited about expanding the platform under the ICG brand.”