King Street Capital?

Fixer

Does anyone know about their interview process and case study?

For HF or CLO? 

Here is my current understanding of the firm: 

• After Fran decided to step down in 2019, there was some consideration as to whether King Street should be wound down or what exactly should be done with it; as Fran was considered the "franchise" talent. They had the flagship hedge fund and also the Rockford Tower CLO platform, which like all CLO platforms was generally portable/sellable. It wasn't entirely clear what clients would do with their capital and if they wanted to stay
• Some of the senior investment professionals left to start their own respective things. For instance, Pat Dowd left to start the credit effort at Viking
• The remaining team - Brian, Young, David, etc. decided to replug in and re-raise capital. They now have two funds - my understanding is that one resembles the old flagship of distressed/stressed credit investing, and another is more Diameter-like in flipping things for points. As someone else noted, the old KS did hire a lot of traders and had no shame about flipping things as opposed to working them out through a process; if they thought it was easier
• The new AUM is down since the Fran days - high singles relative to high teens when Fran was around
• I was surprised to see them so aggressively in WeWork; which I am not directly involved in but I think the general consensus is they did well in equitizing and forcing Softbank to contribute more $$$ to the pot. Time will tell if that is a good investment or not, but I think their process work was good
• My understanding is that they are slightly more "poddy" following the departure of Fran - they have a new office in Charlottesville that mainly accommodates a Healthcare PM
• I unfortunately don't have any insight into their interview or case study process

Helpful. I had gotten a few pings on that viking opportunity. What ever came of it, how much capital is Pat working with?

Do you know if the CLO people work across strategies?

Here is my current understanding of the firm: 

• After Fran decided to step down in 2019, there was some consideration as to whether King Street should be wound down or what exactly should be done with it; as Fran was considered the "franchise" talent. They had the flagship hedge fund and also the Rockford Tower CLO platform, which like all CLO platforms was generally portable/sellable. It wasn't entirely clear what clients would do with their capital and if they wanted to stay
• Some of the senior investment professionals left to start their own respective things. For instance, Pat Dowd left to start the credit effort at Viking
• The remaining team - Brian, Young, David, etc. decided to replug in and re-raise capital. They now have two funds - my understanding is that one resembles the old flagship of distressed/stressed credit investing, and another is more Diameter-like in flipping things for points. As someone else noted, the old KS did hire a lot of traders and had no shame about flipping things as opposed to working them out through a process; if they thought it was easier
• The new AUM is down since the Fran days - high singles relative to high teens when Fran was around
• I was surprised to see them so aggressively in WeWork; which I am not directly involved in but I think the general consensus is they did well in equitizing and forcing Softbank to contribute more $$$ to the pot. Time will tell if that is a good investment or not, but I think their process work was good
• My understanding is that they are slightly more "poddy" following the departure of Fran - they have a new office in Charlottesville that mainly accommodates a Healthcare PM
• I unfortunately don't have any insight into their interview or case study process

Do they do anything in equities?

Wework has yet to play out in that maybe there’s still some hope with the business, but on a MTM basis (which absolutely matters in liquid distressed) it has been pretty disastrous no? Yes they seemed to extract a lot of value from SoftBank from a process standpoint. Just goes to show good investing is far more about getting the business/earnings right than “process”.