Pierfront Capital Fund Management, a Singapore-based fund manager offering private credit solutions to real asset sectors, has closed its second fund at $700 million, per an announcement.
The capital raised includes $450 million of investor commitments and co-investment commitments.
The fund – Keppel-Pierfront Private Credit Fund – is jointly sponsored by Singapore-based real estate financing platform Clifford Capital Holdings and Keppel Capital, the asset management arm of Keppel Corporation Limited. Pierfront Capital is also owned by Clifford Capital Holdings and Keppel Capital.
Clifford Capital Holdings and Keppel Capital each committed $100 million to the fund.
Other investors in the second fund include the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Manulife, the Alberta Investment Management Corporation on behalf of its clients, GCM Grosvenor on behalf of a separately managed account, and Affin Hwang Asset Management.
Pierfront’s second vehicle provides loans to companies across a wide range of real asset sectors in the Asia Pacific including renewable energy, transportation, telecom, logistics, social infrastructure and other core infrastructure.
The fund has already deployed or committed 75% of its capital across 11 transactions.
That “speaks of the opportunity set in Asia private credit,” said Pierfront Capital CEO and CIO Stéphane Delatte. “Performance continues to be robust and underpins the strength of our investment process and the defensive nature of the strategy which is generating attractive risk-adjusted returns,” he added.
Pierfront’s first fund, Pierfront Capital Mezzanine Fund, had committed about $400 million across 15 investments, achieving a gross internal rate of return close to mid-teens as of September 2022, the firm said.
Some of its exits include India’s renewables company Greenko and Indonesia’s energy firm Merdeka in 2018, as well as Singapore-based industrial engineering company TEE International and Indonesia’s natural resources group Castle Ridge in 2020.
A spate of global and regional managers have set their interest in Asia’s private credit space. KKR closed its inaugural KKR Asia Credit Opportunities Fund at $1.1 billion in May as one of the largest pan-Asia credit funds.
Also in May, Bloomberg reported that Blackstone aimed to expand its private credit assets in Asia to at least $5 billion in the near term from the $500 million committed as of Q4 2021.
Last month, Singapore’s central bank said it will be allocating $1 billion to global private credit fund managers who commit to establishing or deepening their presence in Singapore.
Meanwhile, other investment firms that have set up private credit vehicles include Temasek-backed investment firm SeaTown Holdings, Hong Kong-based Dignari Capital Partners and Malaysia-headquartered Navis Capital Partners.