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Delancey Backs New Business As Expansion Continues

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UK investment manager Delancey is backing a new platform that aims to take advantage of changes in the pension industry. 

Delancey has seeded Evermill Capital, which will provide “asset-backed financing solutions for operating businesses and institutional clients,” the company said in a statement. 

The move is similar to Delancey's support of NW1 Partners, a new business that invests in emerging and niche real estate asset classes, in 2017. It also set up a property lending platform last year. 

Jamie Ritblat set up Delancey in 1995. For the first 20 years of its existence, it primarily ran an open-ended opportunity fund. It is led by Chairman Ritblat, CEO Paul Goswell and Chief Investment Officer Stafford Lancaster.

Evermill will be managed by three partners, Scott Gardner, Tom Benham and Harry Millward. The trio held senior roles at AlphaReal and Macquarie Asset Management.

Asset-backed finance involves lending to businesses with loans backed by hard assets like property or buying those assets from companies to provide them with capital. 

Evermill’s founders said there are big opportunities in property assets that provide long income due to changes in the pensions world.

Bulk annuity insurers are increasingly buying the pension liabilities of defined benefit pension schemes, or schemes typically run by companies for their employees. EY estimates that there are about £50B of such buyouts in the works over the coming years. 

To match the liabilities — the payouts to policyholders — of the pension schemes they are buying, insurance companies need long-dated assets. Evermill is targeting real estate assets of this type.