Castlelake partners with Aequum Capital to establish speciality lending platform

By Edlyn Cardoza

Castlelake, L.P., a global alternative investment manager investing in asset-rich opportunities, partnered with Aequum Capital Founder, LLC, a tech-enabled speciality finance lender. Castlelake established a new commercial lending platform for the origination and servicing efficient senior asset-backed loans to small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S.

The platform, which will operate under the Aequum brand, will leverage Castlelake’s asset experience and the significant sector knowledge of the Aequum team to offer comprehensive lending solutions that seek to address borrowers’ needs for working capital, growth, acquisitions, recapitalisations, turnarounds and other situations. Typical loan sizes are expected to range from $1 million to $10 million and span various industries.

“In today’s environment, we believe it is increasingly challenging for small- and medium-sized businesses to find the financing and capital solutions they need from traditional bank channels,” said Matt Little, Partner, Global Specialty Finance and Head of Business Development at Castlelake. “We’re pleased to partner with the experienced Aequum team to expand our reach to these borrowers while offering our investors interesting exposure to an income-oriented, asset-rich investment pipeline.”

Aequum was founded by speciality finance veterans John Stanfield, Orasio Becerra, Michael Keenan, John Ross and Rick Kaufmann, whose collective professional experience includes working within banking institutions, family offices, and speciality finance companies.

In a joint statement, the Aequum principals expressed their motivation to launch the platform with Castlelake: “Together, we founded Aequum Capital under three guiding principles: First, we believe we can provide a necessary service to an underserved segment of the market through our long-standing relationships and knowledge of the industry; second, we are committed to creating a firm with a culture of execution that allows us to offer flexibility while maintaining a core emphasis on credit; and third, we are focused on bringing together the individual skillsets of top talent to work in a quick and efficient manner.”