Effective at close of business on Jan. 31, 2025, Philip Tseng will begin serving as chair of the board of trustees for BlackRock Private Credit Fund, a non-traded business development company that became effective in May 2022. Tseng is currently a managing director of BlackRock Inc. and serves on the board of directors of BlackRock Direct Lending Corp. and BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.; he has been president of both but effective Nov. 6, will resign these presidencies and begin serving as chief executive officer and board chair for both companies.
Prior to joining BlackRock, Tseng was a managing partner at Tennenbaum Capital Partners. TCP managed more than $9 billion in committed capital and was acquired by BlackRock in 2018. In addition to managing the growth and build out of TCP, Tseng was responsible for sourcing, evaluating, structuring, and executing private debt and equity investments. Prior to TCP, he worked in equity research with Credit Suisse First Boston where he initiated coverage of several public technology and business services companies. Prior to that, Mr. Tseng worked in Credit Suisse First Boston’s Technology Investment Banking group and at Deutsche Banc Alex Brown.
Tseng received his MBA from Harvard Business School and his bachelor’s degree with honors in economics from Harvard College.
In other BDC activity, the Class I shares for BlackRock Private Credit Fund, or BCRED, had a total year-to-date net return of 8.5%, also while maintaining a 10.3% annualized distribution rate. According to the company, its focus on senior secured lending to larger, high-quality companies in good investment neighborhood underpins its “strong portfolio fundamentals relative to the broader private credit market. We believe that portfolio credit quality has remained healthy, with low non-accruals of 0.4% at cost and stressed debt investments of 1.7%, both of which remain well below our peers.”
Moody’s recently upgraded BCRED’s rating to Baa2, and BCRED is now the highest rated non-traded BDC by Moody’s. Drivers of the upgrade, according to the BDC, include its quality of assets, earnings, origination platform, and optimized balance sheet. BCRED said the upgrade may allow it to continue to lead in cost of financing versus our non-traded peers and to maximize earnings for investors. According to the company, this is reflected in BCRED’s bond issuances this year, which priced approximately 25% tighter than similar bonds issued by its non-traded peers.
According to BCRED, its strength is augmented by Blackstone’s scale and capabilities which benefit BCRED shareholders, as evidenced by the lowest cost of capital among non-traded peers.
Click here to visit The DI Wire directory page.
Read the full article here
