Janus Henderson to Buy Victory Park in Private Credit Expansion

“We’ve been hearing about direct lending for years,” Dibadj said. “But clients are looking for more esoteric private credit. Asset-based finance is where the opportunity is.”.

The entire opportunity set for the private credit market could be as large as $40 trillion, Apollo Global Management Inc. has said. Blue Owl Capital Inc., which agreed in July to acquire a credit manager in the space, has estimated that the asset-based financing industry could represent a $7 trillion market today.

“Size does matter, as flippant as that sounds, especially in a global world,” said Victory Park CEO Richard Levy, who founded the firm in 2007 with senior partner Brendan Carroll.

“Our LPs have entrusted us over the last 20 years for executing in the asset-backed space, they’re also asking us to fill out different products for them,” Levy said in an interview.

Details on Janus

The purchase marks another step into the private credit market for Janus Henderson, which announced in May that it was acquiring the National Bank of Kuwait Group’s emerging markets private investments team, NBK Capital Partners.

Janus Henderson already has a track record in the liquid credit markets of securitized debt, namely via exchange-traded funds.

The firm reached $10 billion in assets in the biggest ETF tracking collateralized loan obligations, helping further tighten its grip on the quickly growing niche.

Aside from its AAA CLO ETF, the asset manager has another ETF that tracks CLOs with riskier credit ratings, and also has launched ETFs in other securitized markets such as mortgage-backed securities.