Oaktree and 17Capital announce strategic partnership

According to a statement, the strategic partnership will benefit both parties, strengthening their standing as financing partners in the private equity sponsor community.

17Capital will continue to operate as an independent business, according to the same statement.

Founded in 2008 by Pierre-Antoine de Selancy and Augustin Duhamel 17Capital specialises in NAV-based fund financing. It is headquartered in London and has an additional office in New York, which it opened in 2016, six years after the firm’s first deal in the US.

The GP is currently deploying equity via 17Capital 5 which held a final close in July 2021 on USD 2.9bn. LPs in the fund include Connection Capital, according to Unquote Data.

Asked how the partnership with Oaktree came about, 17Capital co-founder de Selancy told Unquote: "In Oaktree, we found an organisation that was extremely close to us in terms of culture and in their approach to strategy, risk, and being ahead of the market."

US expansion is on the cards following the announcement of the new partnership. "The PE industry in the US is around 2.5-3x larger than in Europe and we have always wanted to be as dominant in the US as we are in Europe," de Selancy said. "The US team has done an amazing job, but there is more that we can do. We wanted a partner with the right access to GPs and funds. If we could find a firm which was working with these parties already, where we could plug our offering into these existing conversations, we believed that this would be very powerful.”

Los-Angeles headquartered Oaktree Capital Management manages credit, private equity, real assets and listed equities strategies. It was formed in 1995 had USD 166bn AUM as of 31 December 2021. Alternative asset manager Brookfield Asset Management is a majority shareholder in the firm, having acquired a 62% stake in Oaktree in 2019.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett advised Oaktree, while 17Capital was advised by Evercore and Kirkland & Ellis. 

The European PE market has seen a number of consolidation deals in recent months. Pollen Street Capital was acquired by listed Honeycomb Investment Trust in February via a reverse merger that saw the GP become a publicly listed entity, as reported. In September 2021, CVC acquired secondaries firm Glendower Capital, two months after US-based asset management firm PGIM acquired Switzerland-based small-cap secondaries specialist Montana Capital Partners.

[Editor's note: The article has been updated post publication to include comments from 17Capital co-founder Pierre-Antoine de Selancy]

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