Golding Capital Partners, one of Europe’s leading independent asset managers for alternative investments, has strengthened its investment expertise by appointing Abhik Das as the new Head of Private Debt. As Managing Director, he is responsible for GCP’s overall private debt investment activities. His role comprises the selection of primaries, secondaries and coinvestment opportunities for GCP’s institutional investment programmes and managed accounts. In this function, he reports to Dr Matthias Reicherter, GCP’s Chief Investment Officer.

By hiring Abhik Das, GCP has significantly strengthened its investment competence and transaction expertise in the private debt asset class. Abhik Das can draw on more than eleven years of direct investment experience. The native Swiss-American was most recently a Partner in the Private Debt Group at BlueBay Asset Management in London, where he was responsible for the selection and execution of new primary financings for medium-sized companies across Europe. In this role, he was primarily responsible for direct investments in German-speaking Europe. During his almost six years at BlueBay, he successfully completed transactions with a total volume of around €1.0 billion on behalf of institutional investors. Abhik Das previously worked in the Principal Finance division at Macquarie, where he was involved in a variety of investments across the capital structure of European businesses. He began his career in investment banking at Credit Suisse in Zurich and in leveraged finance at Lehman Brothers and Nomura in London.

In addition to the appointment of Abhik Das, the GCP private debt investment team is being further expanded with the hiring of Florian Hofer as a new investment manager. Florian Hofer was most recently at EQT Credit and Jefferies in London, where he gained extensive experience of international private debt transactions. With this experience, he will further strengthen the team’s direct investment expertise.

“Private debt is a key growth driver for GCP. We are the leading provider in the Germanspeaking market, with a track record in private debt going back over 15 years and some €2.7 billion under management in this asset class. We intend to build on this position, and are therefore very pleased to have attracted such experienced investment professionals to GCP”, said Jeremy Golding, Founder and Managing Partner of GCP. “Our team’s direct investment expertise is critical for us. We see this as an essential prerequisite in order to ensure the high investment quality that our investors expect. By expanding our private debt investment team, we want to maintain our ability to offer our investors attractive investment solutions that generate a strong and stable yield while offering an attractive overall return. This entails the full range of investments, with primaries, secondaries and carefully selected co-investments from Europe and the US”, added Hubertus Theile-Ochel, Managing Partner of GCP.