McDonnell Investment Management is raising its first CLO since hiring a team of portfolio managers and traders from Columbia Management Advisors and Invesco. A source said Deutsche Bank is marketing a $400 million vehicle called Wind River I for the Oak Brook, Ill.-based fixed-income shop. Brian Good and Jim Fellows, managing directors and co-heads of McDonnell’s credit strategies group and ex-Columbia portfolio managers, did not return calls for comment. A Deutsche Bank spokeswoman also did not return calls. McDonnell is principally an investment-grade firm managing $8 billion in fixed-income assets, but brought the team over to expand into high-yield and leveraged loans. Fellows and Good left Columbia after the bank loan business was bought by Highland Capital Management. The sale was deemed necessary when Bank of America merged with Fleet Bank. Columbia's mutual funds business, which was affiliated to Fleet, was restricted from buying loans originated by Fleet under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (LMW, 4/16).
Robert Hickey, formerly the head of high-yield and investment grade corporate credit at Invesco, also joined as a managing director and senior portfolio manager. Columbia’s ex-bank loan trader, Steven Krull, is also now at McDonnell. Columbia had $2.7 billion in bank loan assets under management and its funds were considered some of the best performing in the business.
McDonnell was created in 2001 when Van Kampen spun off its fixed-income separate account management business to Dennis McDonnell, former president and chief operating officer of the investment advisory group and Edward Treichel, the former executive director of Van Kampen’s institutional asset management business. Good and Fellows were at Van Kampen until 1998 and prior to being at INVESCO, Hickey was once director of corporate bonds at Van Kampen.