Fidelity International Expands Private Credit Team for Direct Lending Push

16 May 2022

Fidelity International (Fidelity), a global asset manager with total client assets of $767.6 billion, has significantly expanded its private credit team with 12 new hires, including senior appointments in direct lending.

As part of a broader private assets capability build, Fidelity’s private credit team was established in early 2021 to launch a full range of loan and private credit strategies. In November last year, the team launched Fidelity’s first collateralised loan obligation (CLO), the Fidelity Grand Harbour 2021, aligned to SFDR Article 8 requirements, which was a first for the industry. Future launches will focus on further expanding the European Loan and CLO platform, as well as a focus on Structured Credit and European Direct lending.

Commenting on the new appointments, Michael Curtis, Head of Private Credit Strategies, Fidelity International, said: “Fidelity entered the private credit market in early 2021 and subsequently launched its first SFDR Article 8 aligned CLO in November 2021. Since then, we have invested heavily in growing the team to ensure we have the right level of support and technical expertise to help drive our ambitious expansion plans as we diversify into new areas such as direct lending.”

Andrew McCaffery, Global CIO, Fidelity International, adds: “A growing, and broader, profile of investors are joining the structural trend to add and increase private assets allocations within their portfolios, and we expect this to expand further over time. We are committed to building a broad private assets business across a wide range of capability areas. Using our bottom-up research process, we will continue to leverage our global research capability and established public markets sustainability methodology to bring an effective ESG approach to private markets.

“To support our growth plans, it’s important we attract and invest in experienced talent, as we have done with the private credit team. More broadly, our private assets business continues to grow at pace, and we have now hired close to 70 dedicated employees across various functions over the past year.”

Source: Fidelity