DKR Capital, an alternative investment management firm that manages $4.2 billion, has added a structured credit team that will target mis-priced credit risk.
The new team is led by Jawahar Chirimar, who was previously head of credit trading in Asia for Lehman Brothers. He will be based in New York with the fund investing in credit derivatives, default swaps, indices, credit options and credit tranches. The team will "identify and manage a portfolio of risks across geographies, sectors, capital structure, term structure and credit leverage," said Chirimar, who was also head of Leman's global correlation trading.
The timing for the fund is based on the increase in size of the credit derivatives market and collateralized debt obligation issuance. "Increased market size has created both greater liquidity and more significant opportunities," said Elliot Alchek, managing director. Cash-flow CDO issuance exceeded $100 billion last year.
Other recent additions to DKR who will play roles on the newly established team include Vivek Pal, a director of investment-grade research at Goldman Sachs; Nirjhar Jain, a manger of the CDO trading book at Deutsche Bank; Mark Cernicky, a credit derivatives portfolio manager at Amerus Capital Management; and Pradeep Pattem, a structured credit proprietary trader at Deutsche Bank. Pal, Jain, Cernicky and Pattem were unavailable for comment. Calls to spokesmen at Goldman, Lehman, Deutsche Bank and Amerus were not immediately returned.