Cerberus Phases Out Dymas Lending Brand, Retains Ableco: UPDATED, CORRECTED

Cerberus Capital Management LP will do its leveraged lending under its own name or through its Ableco Finance LLC affiliate, Buyouts has learned. The New York megafund has decided to phase out the brand of its other lending operation, known as Dymas.

In an e-mail today to customers and employees, Eric F. Miller, a senior managing director at Cerberus, said the firm has formed a new financing arm, Cerberus Business Finance LLC, that will absorb the Dymas brand and business and will provide “sensible financing anywhere in the capital structure” with a focus on mid-market companies.

Existing Dymas customers should expect no change to the servicing of their loans, Miller said.

Cerberus did not immediately repond to a request for comment. (UPDATE: Cerberus declined comment.)

Buyouts reported in March that Cerberus was planning to consolidate its lending operations, although it was not clear at that time whether Dymas alone was to be shuttered or if Ableco also was to be affected. It now seems clear that Ableco will continue on.

Ableco is an opportunistic lending company that invests in leveraged buyouts and leveraged “roll-ups,” bridge loans, recapitalizations, refinancing, debt restructurings, acquisitions and Chapter 11 reorganizations, including debtor-in-possession and exit financing, according to the Thomson One database. Sources told Buyouts in March that Dymas functioned largely as a sales arm for Ableco.

In conjunction with the phaseout of Dymas, former Dymas employees Ken Leonard, Al Ricchio and Andrew Marek have left “to pursue new opportunities,” Miller said in the letter. Jeff Scott, another former Dymas staffer, will remain as a managing director based in Chicago.

(CORRECTION: The headline and text of this item has been changed to reflect that the Dymas brand is being phased out, but the business is not being shut down.)