Sagard announces senior loans fund with $400m-$500m target

The Toronto-based asset manager’s fund will launch in Q1 2022 and focus on non-sponsored, first-lien lending.

Sagard Credit Partners, the credit arm of alternative asset manager Sagard, has announced the launch of a new senior loan fund, according to a news release.

The fund’s target is between $400 million and $500 million of equity commitments, Sagard told Private Debt Investor, with a hard-cap of $750 million. It is expected to officially launch in the first quarter of 2022.

Sagard’s senior loan fund will focus on first-lien lending in the mid-market to North American non-sponsored businesses with $50 million or less in EBITDA, the manager said.

“A senior loan product is highly complementary to our existing opportunistic credit platform because it can leverage our robust and differentiated sourcing engine,” managing partner and CIO Adam Vigna told PDI. “We believe that expanding into this adjacency will allow further flexibility to structure investments in a way that maximises relative value and increases our relevancy to our counterparties.”

The senior loan fund will be led by Dev Gopalan, who is joining Sagard as a partner and portfolio manager after working at Angel Island Capital and KKR.

Sagard Credit Partners closed its first credit fund in December 2018 at $557 million and its second credit fund is still fundraising after holding a first close of $650 million in December of last year. The firm also raised a $725 million healthcare fund, which closed in February, according to PDI research.

Toronto-based Sagard has more than $8 billion under management and invests across private credit, private equity, royalties and venture capital.