Riverside Credit Solutions Fund I seeks $250 mln to $500 mln

Riverside Co’s new senior-debt team, headed by David Dobies, is in the market with its first fund, a source said.

Riverside Credit Solutions is targeting $250 million to $500 million with its debut pool, the person said.

The fund will seek to invest in lower-middle-market companies with $5 million to $35 million of EBITDA, the person said. The fund will originate loans from its PE relationships and expects about 80 percent to go to private-equity-backed companies, the source said.

PPMs have gone out but marketing for Fund I will begin in earnest in January, the source said.

The fund represents a reunion of former NewStar Financial executives. Dobies, Tom Gillis and David Kilpatrick joined Riverside in June, Buyouts has reported. Dobies is a co-founder and former co-head of NewStar. He left the Boston lender in 2013 and joined TCW Group in early 2014 as a managing director in direct lending. Dobies is currently managing partner of Riverside Credit Solutions.

Gillis was a director at NewStar; he left in 2012. He joined Silicon Valley Bank and was most recently a managing director-sponsor finance, healthcare, his LinkedIn profile said. He is a partner at Riverside Credit Solutions. Kilpatrick, a Riverside Credit partner, was previously a director at NewStar Financial, the source said.

“They’ve gotten the band back together,” the person said.

Riverside Co, which is known for sponsoring consolidations in the lower middle market, is expanding into credit investing and providing investors with high-yielding products that have a variety of risk-return characteristics, Buyouts said in September.

This year, the PE firm closed a $50 million fund, Riverside Acceleration Capital, that provides growth capital to enterprise software companies in the form of loans with royalty-like characteristics, the story said.

Action Item: To contact Riverside, email Graham Hearns at ghearns@riversidecompany.com

Photo courtesy ©iStock/Jacob Ammentorp Lund