Keppel-Pierfront private credit fund targets $600m for Asia-Pacific

Keppel-Pierfront Private Credit Fund held a first close on $200 million this week. It is understood that the fund’s target is $600 million.

The vehicle is in the deployment phase, focusing on providing customised debt solutions to corporates or projects mainly in real asset sectors across the Asia-Pacific region.

Its investment scope has four pillars: infrastructure, real estate, transportation and logistics, and energy and natural resources.

Capital commitments came from Pierfront Capital Mezzanine Fund and Keppel Capital Holdings, both joint shareholders of the manager of the credit fund, Pierfront Capital. Each has committed $100 million.

PCMF was established in 2016 as a joint venture between Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. Temasek holds 90.91 percent of the PCMF holding as of 30 March.

Pierfront Capital is equally owned by Keppel Capital and PCMF. Although Pierfront Capital is not a subsidiary of Clifford Capital, Pierfront Capital and Clifford Capital are related Temasek portfolio companies.

As previously reported by Private Debt Investor, Clifford Capital set up a project finance securitisation platform, Bayfront Infrastructure Management, in November 2019. Clifford Capital and AIIB have a 70 percent and 30 percent equity stake respectively in BIM.

Clifford Capital’s shareholders include Temasek, DBS Bank, John Hancock Life Insurance, Prudential Assurance Singapore, Standard Chartered and SMBC.

Stephane Delatte, chief executive officer and chief investment officer of Pierfront Capital, told PDI: “Our main focus is to back strong sponsors with reliable projects, contracted cash flows and hard assets.”

According to Delatte, while the primary focus of Pierfront Capital is on origination and execution of privately negotiated debt transactions, his team may look opportunistically at private credit secondaries transactions given the current market environment.

PDI understands that based on previous deals it has executed, Pierfront Capital’s typical transaction sizes are between $30 million and $50 million, with average loan tenors ranging from three to five years.

The manager focuses on providing financing for real asset owners’ asset growth, acquisition financings and refinancing opportunities, among other deal types.

Pierfront Capital is licensed as a fund management service provider under the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Capital Markets Services scheme.