AllianceBernstein forms $500 mln credit platform

The platform will be seeded with an initial $500 million from an undisclosed institutional investor. The team does plan to raise its own fund, but for now the plan is to invest the seed capital, according to Brent Humphries, who will lead up the platform at AllianceBernstein.

“We believe the mid market is a very large end-market with very favorable secular trends, with banks decreasingly involved, which creates opportunities for alternative credit providers,” Humphries told sister website peHUB.

As part of the effort, AllianceBernstein has brought on the former senior leadership group of Barclays Private Credit Partners. Humphries, former president of Barclays Private Credit Partners, will lead the group, to be called AllianceBernstein Private Credit Partners.

Humphries will be joined by four former Barclays colleagues: Jay Ramakrishan, Patrick Fear, Shishir Agrawal and Wesley Raper. At Barclays, Humphries and colleagues built a credit business that managed about $1.5 billion of commitments across 48 transactions.

The team will work to build relationships with private equity managers in the middle market, which will be an important channel for the business, Humphries said.

Chris Witkowsky is editor of peHUB.