Boston, MA 05/09/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Fifth Street Finance Corp. (NASDAQ:FSC) announced forming a joint investment venture with Kemper Corporation’s (KMPR) subsidiary Trinity Universal Insurance Company (“Trinity”).The Venture will work on creating a company for managing Senior Level notes and would be called “Senior Loan Fund JV I, LLC” . FSC, as a leading specialty finance company, is ensuring consistency with the firm’s strategy of making investments with a focus on middle market and additional corporate lending as part of the joint venture.
Leonard M. Tannenbaum, Chief Executive Officer of FSC said “SLF JVI strengthens our bond with Kemper’s investment team signifying the value of our integration with middle market origination platform. Our private equity clients will benefit from additionally available financing solutions. Growing the joint venture should lead to higher yielding on equity. Net investment revenue per share at FSC is bound to increase. The positive signals confirm the implementation of outlined strategic initiatives leading to increased revenues.”
M. Boschelli, Kemper’s Chief Investment Officer further added “Fifth Street‘s expertise and experience in originating, underwriting and managing of middle market credits will be completely leveraged with this joint venture. During our eight-year relationship, we have invested in Fifth Street Finance Corp. (NASDAQ:FSC)’s platform a number of times. But this joint venture is special. We will invest in a layered and structured high-returns environment, and the choice of accepting the underlying investments is at our disposition.”
A $100 million of subordinated notes and equity Fifth Street Finance Corp. (NASDAQ:FSC) and Trinity will be provided to the joint venture by FSC and Trinity with each contributing $87.5 million $12.5 million respectively. An approximate $200 million is expected to be generated through third party financing for SLF JV I. It is expected that initial funding will come from existing assets provided by FSC.
The joint venture has a strong footing in the industry and is expected to be a win-win situation for both the parties involved.
