Credit and Direct Lending Funds
Schulte is a leader among law firms in representing private credit funds, especially in the rapidly growing and highly innovative direct lending market. We help our credit fund clients navigate the constantly evolving private credit market and create diverse and cutting-edge fund-level credit and lending strategies.
Unlike law firms that focus on only open-end (e.g., hedge funds) or closed-end (e.g., private equity or venture capital funds) structures, Schulte’s large investment management practice has always maintained a large and diverse client base of open-end, closed-end and hybrid funds.
Our experience with a mix of credit fund structures drawn from representing this broad credit fund client base gives us an advantage in representing diversified credit investors, in particular in circumstances where assets with varying levels of liquidity and expected maturities often justify a hybrid approach, such as PE-lite, Vintage and Evergreen funds, in which we have extensive experience.
Representations
- AB Private Credit Investors
Advise AB Private Credit Investors LLC (“ABPCI”) — a subsidiary of AllianceBernstein — on multiple credit products, including evergreen Direct Lending Funds. ABPCI targets primary-issue middle market credit opportunities that are directly sourced and privately negotiated. As of July 2023, ABPCI has approximately $6.3 billion in assets under management. - Cerberus Capital Management
Advise Cerberus Capital Management on the formation and operation of many of its investment funds, and in those funds' portfolio transactions, covering a wide range of lending, credit, NPL and commercial and residential real estate and mortgage strategies. We also advised Cerberus in connection with the investment of Dyal Capital in its Direct Lending platform. Cerberus has approximately $60 billion in assets under management as of June 2023 and has advisory offices in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and Africa. - MGG
Advise MGG on the formation and operation of their private debt investment funds covering a wide range of senior secured loans, revolving credit and other types of loans. Schulte also represents MGG’s recently launched structured solutions platform, which invests in mezzanine debt, preferred and/or minority common equity, offering investors exposure up and down the capital structure. MGG primarily focuses on North American companies with EBITDA between $5 million and $50 million. MGG has approximately $4.6 billion in assets under management with offices in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta. - Avenue Capital Group
Advise Avenue Capital Group with respect to the formation and operation of several of its closed-end investment vehicles, including multiple generations of its credit opportunity funds which invest primarily in first- or second-lien secured bank loans and also other unsecured debt instruments of leveraged, non-investment-grade companies in the United States and Europe. Avenue Capital Group is a global investment firm that was founded in 1995, which is primarily focused on specialty lending, distressed debt and other special situations investments in the United States, Europe and Asia, managing approximately $12.6 billion as of June 2023.
