KEPPEL’S third private-credit fund raised around US$300 million of committed capital in its first close, the global asset manager and operator announced on Wednesday (Oct 30).
The fund, known as the Keppel Private Credit Fund III, was launched earlier this year with a target fund size of US$1 billion.
Keppel, the fund’s sponsor, said it is committing US$100 million, while the rest of the fund’s investment comes from “top-tier global institutional investors”.
It provides loans to companies with defensive infrastructure-like operating businesses across a range of real asset sectors in Asia-Pacific.
These include areas such as renewable energy, transportation, telecommunications, logistics, social infrastructure and other core infrastructure.
As the third private-credit fund in Keppel’s private-credit strategy, it follows two predecessor funds – the Pierfront Capital Mezzanine Fund and Keppel-Pierfront Private Credit Fund.
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The company’s prior two private-credit funds have committed over US$820 million in nearly 30 investments and have exited half of these investments, which have delivered risk-adjusted returns of low to mid-teens in US dollar terms.
The company said it does not expect the first close of the latest fund to have a material impact on its earnings per share and net tangible assets per share for the financial year ending Dec 31, 2024.
Keppel Credit Fund Management chief executive and chief investment officer Stephane Delatte noted that Asia-Pacific’s private-credit market has “considerable opportunities” to expand, as the region is expected to contribute to more than 60 per cent of global gross domestic product growth over the next decade.
Delatte added that the company’s private-credit strategy seeks to leverage the significant growth of private-credit assets under management in the Asia-Pacific, which have quadrupled over the past decade and reached US$124 billion last year, yet represent only about 6 per cent of the total global private-credit market.
Shares of Keppel were trading down at 0.9 per cent or S$0.06 at S$6.44 as at 2.26 pm.
