Rebecca Fels, Investment Professional, joined alternative credit investor CORDET in early 2019. A German national based in the firm’s Stockholm office, she is working primarily on the origination, analysis, execution, and subsequent monitoring of (debt) investment opportunities in the Nordics as well as in the DACH region.
Rebecca graduated with a Master’s Degree (M.A.) in Accounting and Finance from the University of St. Gallen in 2016. While doing research for her Master’s Thesis examining the impact of covenants on credit risk, she first learned about the private debt market during her exchange semester at Cornell University in 2015 – and got interested.
The alternative asset class has experienced tremendous growth since the Global Financial Crisis. Facing increasing regulation and capital requirements, it has become more costly for banks to hold loans on their balance sheets. As a consequence, traditional credit providers have been undergoing a secular deleveraging, leaving a financing gap for many companies. While larger corporates typically have a wider choice, including the high-yield bond and leveraged loan markets, the main alternative for (smaller) mid-market companies is private debt, in particular direct lending.