Les Lieberman, who helped form Indosuez Capital, has teamed with three other industry veterans to form Porticoes Finance, a firm that will focus on financing for middle-market companies. It has a relationship with a larger, international financial institution, though Lieberman declined to comment on who it was, saying the firm is "publicity shy."
Porticoes will focus on companies with EBITDA of $5 million to $50 million and will target senior first- and second-lien cash flow loans of $50 million to $150 million and subordinated loans of up to $25 million.
"We think there is a huge amount of deal flow in the market given all the money raised by the private equity world," Lieberman said about the decision to enter the market now. "We talked to a lot of clients from the past and they said there was definitely room for another lender in the space."
He said the firm is already looking at about 10 to 15 books for deals in which it may participate. It will also do a collateralized loan obligation, but stressed the firm is not looking to become an asset manager. Instead, whatever deals the firm participates in will be securitized in a CLO. He said it will be warehousing until it reaches about $400 million in assets.
The firm currently has four senior members, Phil DeLeonardis, Stuart Oran and Neil Wiesenberg and Lieberman, and he anticipates it will be hiring another four to five individuals at the vice president level, along with associates and analysts. By the end of the year he said there should be about 20 professionals working at the firm. There are other individuals currently working, but he would not name them.
Lieberman and Ken Kencel formed Porticoes Capital Corp. in 2004, an investment company managed by Porticoes Investment Management. The firm had intended to issue an initial public offering, filing a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 14. On July 22, it withdrew the registration statement because the firm had decided to no longer pursue an IPO due to market conditions, according to the filings.
"Porticoes of a few years ago was a BDC (business development company) and we decided not to go that route," Liberman said. "When Apollo finished its BDC, most everybody decided not to do them because there seemed to be a glut of those deals. Blackstone [Group] pulled its deal, Evercore pulled its deal; we were in that vintage."
Kencel is now the ceo of Churchill Financial, a middle-market lending firm formed in February by Bear Stearns Merchant Banking and Churchill Capital (CIN, 4/28).
At Indosuez, Lieberman completed over 150 transactions and committed more than $5 billion of financing to middle-market leveraged companies. Lieberman is the executive managing director of Porticoes.
DeLeonardis was also a senior member of Indosuez Capital. Oran was previously a managing member of Roxbury Capital, a merchant banking firm that works on private equity investments. Wiesenberg worked at WindRiver Capital, a middle-market private equity firm.