Platinum Credit?
Anyone know anything about this group? Seems like they’ve been trying to raise an opps fund for years with little success but have a top guy running the group (+ a good institution behind them).
Any insight into their interview case study?
DM me
Interviewed with them and backed out before I went in for the case study. The analyst working there at the time was one of the most dead looking people I had ever seen. My impression from meeting with the senior folks was that they only cared about modeling ability and it felt like the role would've been a step back from what I was doing at the time. I also had concerns about their fund raising ability given they had started the process for the credit fund some time before I even interviewed and it wasn't done yet. They didn't seem concerned about it because they could invest out of the flagship fund and also warehouse loans on Platinum's balance sheet. Their MO was loan-to-own, and the idea was to try and be a lender to companies where the PE group didn't win the auction. There was a large emphasis on still doing all of the operational work the PE group would do ahead of making the investment, which didn't seem nuts for what they were trying to do. It just seemed like the credit team was very small, so I passed because it seemed like both a big step back in responsibility and bigger step up in sweatiness. I'm frankly still surprised they haven't closed the credit fund yet which is concerning because my experience was > 1 year ago.
Y
FWIW, I was not blown away by Michael. Fund raising difficulty could not be a function of the market as almost everyone else has been successful raising similar / credit opportunity funds during the timeframe we're talking about here. I do think its a pretty good seat for someone coming out of a banking program and looking to move again in ~2 years, my circumstances were different.
Would agree with Analyst in HF here on fundraising difficulty not being a function of the market. Over the past few years credit opps funds have had two pretty big windows of demand (early to mid 2020 and the entire last year since yields started rising) and basically everyone that wanted to raise money was able to do so. Even funds with pretty poor prior returns doing loan to own type investing like Ascribe raised in late 2019 or early 2020 if I recall correctly so that would be a red flag on the fundraising side at least. I'm not familiar with the platform or the head of the team either so can't really comment on anything else.
T
Sounds like this is the story line they are feeding you. It’s just not true. Pretty much everyone in credit opps, public or private, has raised some type of dislocation fund in the last 3 years.
They are exploiting your naivete and not telling the true story, given you don’t seem to be plugged into what’s actually going on in the buyside. This is not your fault given your youth, but just be careful with these dishonest pitches from “up-and-coming” funds. I went to one of these and out of the blue the senior management shut down the credit business due to lack of traction. Platinum should be close to that point given how long they’ve been trying.
All this tracks. I spoke with them recently and they had more turnover and had pushed off final close twice.
Agree w/ all except it's not a loan-to-own shop, more performing credits, and 20% or so rescue financing depending on environment at the time. They lost 3 of their associates when I was speaking to them.
Just to clarify, loan-to-own in their case meaning their pitch to me was they are fully prepared to own their borrowers and hope it happens, but the base case being a nice piece of paper in a performing situation. I was coming from an opportunistic / loan-to-own shop so much of our conversation revolved around enforcement and turnaround strategies so could be why it was more of a point of discussion.
Y
Platinum has other issues to worry about including investing an entire PE vintage or two at top of market in 2021 and holding a bag of nothing to show for it. They have probably a dozen distressed portcos right now
Anyone know who is the headhunter for the credit mandate?
It seems like one of the senior guys here moved on - doesn’t seem like they’re doing much on the credit side in 2024 going into 2025
Whats the deal here?
Read the thread
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