PrefBlog

Another private debt fund bites the dust:

Private debt manager Next Edge Capital is gating its flagship credit fund after a surge in redemption requests, meaning clients are unable to get their money out and the portfolio will be wound down over the next two years.

The decision, announced last week, marks Next Edge’s second wind-down of a private debt fund. Since 2020, the Toronto-based asset manager has also been winding down the Next Edge RCM Private Yield Fund, whose credit adviser is R.C. Morris Capital Management Ltd. The fund reported a 25-per-cent loss in the month of March and an 18-per-cent loss in 2023, as it becomes more concentrated and subject to wider performance fluctuations.

Based in Vancouver, R.C. Morris is a private lender and has participated in a number of Canadian wealth management deals in recent years. The company lent money to Bridging Finance Inc., the private debt manager that was put in receivership in 2021, and it also backed Gary Ng’s acquisition spree of independent wealth management companies between 2018 and 2020, including PI Financial.
…
With so much uncertainty in the sector, a large number of Next Edge’s investors tried to cash out, and the Private Debt Fund dealt with redemption requests worth $145-million in 2023 – close to half of the fund’s $298-million in total assets under management – according to an investor memo sent last week.

Redemption requests have continued this year and currently sit at 20 per cent of total assets. Next Edge believes the best option is to wind down the portfolio and roll its investors into a different fund in the future. In doing so, management has capped the existing fund’s monthly payouts at a 6-per-cent annual yield – only 1-per-cent higher than some guaranteed investment certificates – and halted redemptions.

A quick search didn’t tell me anything about their investment in Bridging Finance or Gary Ng’s adventure … I was hoping to learn when these had been disposed of (at a loss, presumably) or written down.

The BoC cut the policy rate today as widely expected; GOC-5 was down a bit to 3.45%.

PerpetualDiscounts now yield 6.53%, equivalent to 8.49% interest at the standard equivalency factor of 1.3x. Long corporates yielded 5.13% on 2024-5-24 and since then the closing price of ZLC has changed from 14.88 to 15.15, an increase of 181bp in price, implying a decrease of yields of 15bp (BMO reports a duration of 12.35, but don’t disclose whether this is Macaulay or Modified; I will assume Modified) to 4.98%. Therefore, the pre-tax interest-equivalent spread (in this context, the “Seniority Spread”) has widened substantially to 355bp from the 315bp reported May 29.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 5th, 2024 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.