Beechbrook Capital’s Paul Shea speaks at the Private Debt Investor Capital structure forum in London

29th October 2014 – Private Debt Investor organised a well attended event in London. Paul Shea spoke on a panel chaired by James Newsome of Arbour Partners to consider the perceived difficulties of deploying capital in private debt.

The panel discussed several strategies including large-cap, mid-market and crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is growing fast but is limited to small transactions whilst the large-cap markets remain highly competitive. The upper mid-market and large-cap transactions compete with banking liquidity, capital markets and other private debt managers with significant funds to deploy. Paul Shea and Simon Hirtzel of Kreos agreed that attractive opportunities remained in certain niches, such as the European lower mid-market, but are only available up to a certain size.

The conference once again highlighted the growing interest in private debt from limited partners for whom the asset class offers a solution to their requirement for yield. High yielding products are seen as complementary to investors’ other investments and are increasingly being used to match liabilities.