Eldridge is growing its asset management business with CLO issuance set to be a key part of its expanded line-up, according to 9fin sources.

The firm has mandated JP Morgan for its first US CLO, which is being issued under Eldridge Capital Management (ECM) and is expected to launch in Q3, the sources said. ECM senior directors Tarek Barbar and Andrew Ward will be co-PMs for the CLO, reporting into a five-person investment committee.

Longer-term the goal is to build a transatlantic credit business which will include European CLOs, according to sources.

Eldridge is an experienced operator in the CLO market having established CBAM in 2016 and growing that platform to around $15bn of assets (mainly in US CLOs) before selling the assets from that business to Carlyle Group in 2022 for around $787m. However, it was clear that Eldridge’s designs on CLO issuance were not over with sources noting that the firm had plans to build another CLO management platform as far back as late 2022.

The new CLO platform will follow a conservative approach, investing in high quality loans, according to sources (ECM has other pockets of capital which invest more opportunistically).

The insurance business that sits under Eldridge Wealth Solutions (EWS) has appetite for CLO investing (particularly in mezzanine tranches) and is expected to allocate to Eldridge’s CLOs, just as these insurance affiliates supported CBAM in the past.

Barbar has experience investing in loans and high yield through his time at GSAM (2013-2021). He then went on to trade corporate credit and CLOs at EWS’s Security Benefit. Ward was a director at CBAM and stayed on at Security Benefit when the CBAM assets were sold to Carlyle.

It’s rare for a firm to sell its CLO business, only to build a fresh one shortly after. One of the closest comparisons would be TPG, which spun-out its credit unit Sixth Street in 2020 before acquiring Angelo Gordon three years later.

A long history in CLOs

Eldridge’s senior leadership have long had an affinity for CLOs. Todd Boehly, CEO of Eldridge Industries and chairman of Eldridge, is perhaps best known today as one of the owners of Chelsea Football Club and the LA Lakers, but his background is in credit (and structured credit) having founded the credit business at Guggenheim in 2001. In the mid-90s he worked at Credit Suisse First Boston where he structured CBOs.

Similarly Tony Minella, president of Eldridge Industries and CEO of ECM, was co-head of corporate credit at Guggenheim Investments.

So when Eldridge Industries was founded in 2015, it was not entirely surprising that CLO investing (through Security Benefit) and CLO issuance (CBAM) were among the early strategies that the company was built on.

In fact, Eldridge Industries also took a minority stake in private credit specialist Maranon Capital in 2015, supporting the firm as it tapped into middle-market CLO issuance. Eldridge Industries took a majority stake in the business in 2019. Maranon has $3.34bn of CLO AUM across eight mid-market CLOs, as of 9fin’s Q1 2025 rankings.

As far as the build out of another CLO platform goes, round two is going to look different. Whereas CBAM was majority-owned by Eldridge Industries, it was not fully integrated. But at the end of last year Eldridge Industries announced the launch of a wholly-owned asset management and insurance holding company, named Eldridge. This in turn would consist of ECM (asset management) and EWS (insurance and retirement solutions).

Sources said that there are fundraising plans afoot across all parts of ECM which is divided into credit — diversified credit and real estate credit — and equities, which consists of GP solutions and sports and entertainment investing.

The new CLO business will fit under ECM’s diversified credit division, which manages roughly $66bn of assets, according to its website. About $45bn of that is in corporate credit, $14bn in structured credit and $7bn in asset-based credit.

Eldridge has also been one of the early adopters of CLO ETFs through Eldridge AAA CLO ETF (CLOX), which manages roughly $149.1m; Eldridge BBB-B CLO ETF (CLOZ), with $687.3m; and Eldridge AAA CLO UCITS ETF (TAAA) which runs $113.2m, according to the ETFs’ respective websites.

CLOX and CLOZ were previously managed by officials from Panagram Structured Asset Management before they left to launch Reckoner Capital in November 2024.

Eldridge is poised to join several US CLO debutants this year with Polen, Symetra, Arini, Kohlberg, Macquarie and Garnet already pricing their first deals this year, while Chatham Asset Management launched its debut deal with Morgan Stanley on Friday.

Other entrants include Lord Abbett which is partnering with JP Morgan for its debut deal and AI-powered Anthelion Capital, which has mandated Natixis on its debut US CLO, which is expected to be launched soon. National Life Group and Sona Asset Management also recently hired a US CLO portfolio manager – Jonathan Rabinowitz and Adam Jakimo respectively — while Rokos Capital Management is exploring US CLO management.

A spokesperson for Eldridge declined to comment. A spokesperson for JP Morgan did not respond to a request for comment by deadline.