Ares Administration Company has introduced the ultimate closing of Ares Senior Direct Lending Fund III (SDL III), creating the most important direct lending fund within the agency’s historical past and the most important institutional fund out there.
SDL III raised $15.3bn (£11.9bn), beating its preliminary goal of $10bn.
The whole capital base for SDL III is anticipated to be roughly $33.6bn, which incorporates fairness commitments in associated automobiles and anticipated leverage.
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The fund is almost double the scale of SDL II, its 2021 predecessor, which had $14.9bn in whole debt and fairness commitments. Roughly $6.4bn in debt and fairness commitments for SDL III had been raised through the second quarter of 2024 alone.
“During the last twenty years, Ares has developed vital scale, relationships, and deep funding expertise inside direct lending, all of which have continued to help our management place out there,” mentioned Mitch Goldstein, associate and co-head of the Ares Credit score Group.
“We admire the sturdy vote of confidence from our rising investor base, and we sit up for executing on our longstanding technique of offering versatile capital options to our debtors whereas searching for to generate enticing danger adjusted returns for our buyers.”
By its US direct lending technique, Ares supplies instantly originated senior secured loans to center market firms in North America. It has deployed the identical technique in SDL III as its predecessor funds, SDL I and SDL II, with investments in firms with $10m to greater than $150m of EBITDA the place Ares funds act primarily because the lead supplier of capital.
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Ares seeks to put money into firms that preserve a robust aggressive place of their respective markets with skilled administration groups and robust free money stream traits.
SDL III has already deployed vital capital with the fund committing $9bn of capital to greater than 165 firms up to now.
“The center market continues to expertise vital demand for dependable capital options because it stays underserved by banks and different conventional lending sources,” mentioned Mark Affolter, associate and co-head of US direct lending.
“Our in depth origination functionality permits us to see a broad set of potential alternatives to lend to prime quality small, medium and large-sized firms. We’re happy to have already deployed practically one third of the fund’s capital up to now in what we imagine are compelling funding alternatives.”
As of 31 March 2024, Ares Administration Company’s world platform had roughly $428bn of property below administration.
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