Kimura Capital launches new alternative credit fund

The new portfolio will be the specialist alternative lending and trade finance asset manager’s third fund.

Kimura Capital, the UK-based asset manager is launching a new speciality lending fund through the acquisition of lending specialist Burkian Advisors.

The Kimura Alternative Lending Income Fund will focus on private credit opportunities in real estate, consumer loans, SME lending, trade finance, receivables financing, litigation finance and transportation.

Targeting institutional investors, the fund will be headed up by Kimura Co-CIO Michael Kianicka who founded Burkian in January 2011, who is joining the firm as partner.

Kianicka was formerly investing into securitised assets via a multi-manager strategy but in 2016 Burkian rotated the strategy fully into alternative lending as investment banks pulled back from the space due to increased regulation.

As well as diversified, non-bank lending, the portfolio will allocate to a variety of private loans through both traditional channels and marketplace platforms.

The fund will open with $10m of seed assets and is “finalisding discussions with multiple seed investors,” the firm says.

Dr. Kianicka was formerly Head of Investments and Products at HSBC, where he was responsible for compliance of all investment and trading activities of the Alternative Investment Group (AIG) and the PB Investment Group.

 Prior to HSBC, Dr. Kianicka was Director of Compliance at LGT Group overseeing the distribution of alternative investments and the bank’s trading operations.

Launched in 2016 by ex-Goldman Sachs energy head Neil West and former PPG commodities head Kristofer Tremaine, Kimura manages commodity trade finance, structured trade finance and alternative lending strategies.

Neil West joined Goldman in 1987 to head up and develop its energy division in London and was in the role until 1994. He has also held senior roles with Phibro and Tosco and was head of oil trading with energy trading firm Hetco until 2012.

Kristofer Tremaine was previously a managing director of energy derivatives with Societe Generale and was also a commodities trader with merchant commodities firm Hetco and UBS.

Kimura's management team also includes COO Mark Wright, who was formerly commodities COO at Standard Bank, Alan Gordon, who was the former global head of trade finance at Trafigura.”