Mercatus Finance (Mercatus) is a new platform launched by Arena Investors to provide cash flow-based senior secured loans to middle-market borrowers in special situations, typically those dealing with process risks (e.g., timing constraint, out-of-favor industry, multiple collateral types, etc). Mercatus’ competitive advantage will be a deep underwriting of what others find too difficult or time consuming to understand. Mercatus will be industry agnostic (except energy and real-estate) and focus on the United States and Canada. Mercatus will achieve superior risk-adjusted returns by exploiting illiquidity; borrowers are expected to be non- or lightly-sponsored and investment opportunities will tend to be non-competitive. Based on Arena’s expectation of the immediately investable universe of opportunities, Mercatus will initially target $500M - $1B of AUM. AUM expectations will evolve with market conditions.
Arena Investors, LP (Arena) is a $3.6 billion global alternative asset management firm with offices in New York, London, San Francisco, Singapore, Dublin, and Jacksonville. Arena brings decades of experience, a track record of comfort with complexity, the ability to deliver within time constraints and the flexibility to engage in transactions that cannot be addressed by banks and other conventional financial institutions. Arena strives to provide capital to entities in special situations, serving as an originator and underwriter of loans across multiple asset classes including corporate, real estate, structured finance, asset-based lending, and more. At the heart of Arena’s investment process is a proprietary approach to sourcing bespoke opportunities outside traditional sourcing channels. Every investment is designed to generate idiosyncratic returns independent of the macroeconomic cycle and aims to minimize risk.
Requirements
Mercatus Finance is seeking a Vice President or Director level candidate with relevant credit experience to join its team. This person will have minimum of 6 years of finance experience, of which at least 3 years will be as a credit analyst. The ideal candidate will be eager to join a new venture on the ground floor and contribute to its growth and success. The Vice President/Director will be responsible for screening investment opportunities, conducting detailed company and industry due diligence, analyzing financial statements and projections, performing credit analysis, negotiating terms of investment, issuing term sheets, and leading final documentation efforts; in other words, handling all execution elements of an investment. The candidate will have excellent verbal and written communication skills, as all investments will require substantive investment memoranda to attain investment committee approval. The candidate will be able to work and train younger members of the team.