Dan Loeb’s Third Point to Buy $8B Credit Shop
Daniel Loeb’s Third Point has acquired alternative credit fund manager AS Birch Grove from American Securities. Upon completion of the deal, which is expected in the first quarter of 2025, Birch Grove will become a subsidiary of Third Point.
“Birch Grove’s businesses further diversify our credit platform,” said Daniel Loeb, founder and CEO of the $12 billion firm that was started in 1995 as an event-driven hedge fund. “Their well-established CLO franchise has strong momentum, and their capital solutions business complements our new private credit strategy,” he added.
New York-based Third Point has been active in structured credit investing as well as in commercial real estate debt. Chris Taylor was named head of private credit at Third Point in September 2023, and he later brought over two colleagues from Apogem Capital, a wholly owned subsidiary of New York Life that was founded in 2022 with himself as CEO: Third Point continued to add to its credit team over the summer, with Mikhail Faybusovich joining in July after spending over 20 years at Credit Suisse and Matthew Ressler joining from Apollo Global Management in August.
Third Point holds a substantial portion of its assets in credit securities and introduced dedicated credit fund offerings beginning in 2020. The firm launched Malibu Life Re, a life-and-annuity insurer based in the Cayman Islands, earlier this year, and is expanding into other liability-driven investing businesses.
Birch Grove was founded in 2013 by CEO and CIO Jonathan Berger and president Andrew Fink. The firm’s strategies include collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), opportunistic private credit solutions, multi-strategy credit, senior loans and high-yield bonds. Birch Grove’s CLO investments account for more than $5 billion of its current $8 billion in assets.
Berger will maintain his responsibilities at Birch Grove and additionally become co-head of credit at Third Point alongside Third Point partner Ian Wallace.
Wallace, Taylor, Shalini Sriram, head of structured credit, and Stephen Schatzman, head of opportunistic credit will continue to lead their strategies. Birch Grove and Third Point’s existing funds will be run separately,
Jefferies LLC acted as sole financial advisor to Third Point and Willkie Farr & Gallagher provided legal counsel. Birch Grove’s financial advisor is GreensLedge Capital Markets LLC and Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP provided legal counsel. American Securities was advised by Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP.
