Keppel-Backed Pierfront Capital Achieves $700M Final Closing for 2nd Private Credit Fund

Pierfront Capital Fund Management has announced the final closing of its second private credit fund, with the vehicle’s total investable capital (including co-investment commitments) having reached $700 million.

According to the Singapore-based firm, which is owned on a 50:50 basis by Temasek-backed asset managers Keppel Capital and Clifford Capital, the Keppel-Pierfront Private Credit Fund’s investors include Manulife and AIMCo of Canada, the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, American asset manager GCM Grosvenor and Malaysia’s Affin Hwang Asset Management.

Keppel Capital and Clifford Capital also contributed $100 million each to the fund, which provides loans to companies with defensive infrastructure-like business models. The fund has deployed or made commitments to deploy over 75 percent of its committed capital across 11 transactions with a strong forward-looking pipeline, Pierfront said Friday in a release.

“We are delighted to have gathered a significant pool of investable capital during an extremely challenging period for fundraising,” said Pierfront Capital’s CEO and CIO, Stephane Delatte. “The top-tier investors we have attracted provide a strong endorsement to the institutional quality of our platform — one that is supported by strategic shareholders with deep expertise in real assets.”

Mezzanine Follow-Up

Founded in 2016, Pierfront operates as an independent company under government-backed finance provider Clifford Capital, which is 40.5 percent owned by Singapore state holding firm Temasek while Prudential Assurance Company Singapore holds another 20 percent.

Smaller stakes in Clifford Capital are held by Sumitomo Mitsui, DBS, Standard Chartered, Manulife and the Asian Development Bank, according to Pierfront.

The first private credit fund, Pierfront Capital Mezzanine Fund, committed $400 million across 15 investments. That vehicle, jointly owned by Temasek and Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui, achieved close to a mid-teens gross internal rate of return as of September, Pierfront said.

The mezzanine fund’s investments included $50 million into a term loan facility to pan-Asian data centre giant Chindata Group and a $33 million loan to Elite UK Commercial Holdings to support the acquisition of a portfolio of 97 British regional offices known as the Hayhill Portfolio.

Bets on Asian Debt

Bloomberg reported Monday that global fund management titans including Blackstone and KKR are looking to expand in Asia’s private debt sector.

Blackstone is targeting a tenfold increase in private credit assets to at least $5 billion, while Apollo Global Management and KKR recently launched their first Asia-oriented private credit funds worth $1.25 billion and $1.1 billion respectively, the agency said.

KKR has made more than 15 credit investments totalling $2.7 billion in Asia Pacific since 2019, a representative for the Manhattan-based firm told Bloomberg.