Alcentra Limited (Alcentra), an alternative fixed income specialist for BNY Mellon Investment Management (IM), has appointed Sarah Madore, Maria Garcia Diego and Joanna Layton to new roles within its European Direct Lending team.
Sarah Madore and Maria Garcia Diego join as Associates. In addition to the two external appointments, Joanna Layton was hired internally and promoted to Head of European Direct Lending Portfolio Monitoring. Consisting of 12 nationalities, the now 22-strong-person team has an average of nine years’ experience within the European Direct Lending space.
In their roles as Associates, Madore and Garcia Diego will provide additional resource and expertise on key European markets. Sarah will be responsible for the origination and execution of Italian and French private debt investments across a variety of industries. Garcia Diego will be responsible for sourcing and executing private debt investments across industries, with a focus on the Spanish market. In her new role, Layton is responsible for reporting and monitoring performance across the portfolios positions at Alcentra. She also holds the title of Deputy Head of European Credit.
Prior to joining Alcentra, Sar Madore ah was an Associate in the financial sponsors solutions team at UniCredit in Milan, Italy, covering private equity investors and providing financing packages to support leveraged buyouts (LBOs) in the Italian market. Before that she worked at JP Morgan in its Italian M&A team. Maria previously worked in the financial sponsors team at Citi, where she focused on M&A and financing transactions of LBOs, across a range of industries and geographies. Before this, Maria worked at Investindustrial Advisors, a mid-market Italian private equity investment house.
Layton joined Alcentra in 2005 and was previously a Senior Analyst for the European Liquid Loans business at Alcentra. Prior to joining Alcentra, Joanna was an Associate Director in GE Commercial Finance’s leveraged finance business, where she focused on the structuring and execution of European leveraged transactions. Before joining GE, Layton was an analyst within Mizuho Corporate Bank’s leveraged finance credit team.
The Alcentra European Direct Lending team, led by Graeme Delaney-Smith, who launched the business in 2004, is one of the largest and most experienced teams in the industry. Currently managing USD7.9 billion in European Direct Lending investments, the team leverages the broad and deep resources of a USD37 billion firm specialising in corporate credit and private debt.
Graeme Delaney-Smith, Head of European Direct Lending at Alcentra, says: “We are pleased to welcome Sarah, Maria and Joanna to our European Direct Lending team, as we continue to respond to increasing market demand in Europe and build out our expertise across key markets on the continent. In their roles, Sarah and Maria will offer bring expertise on key European markets, such as France, Italy and Spain. In her new position, Joanna will also provide vital intelligence on portfolio positioning and performance.
“We are committed to offering a bespoke quality service to our investors, and with the addition of these new roles we will be even better placed to source opportunities in Europe for our clients. The wealth of experience that these hires bring will be beneficial for clients and an asset to the business.”
These appointments follow the recent hires of Peter M Glaser and Suhail Shaikh as co-heads of Alcentra’s US Direct Lending team.
