DFG Investment Advisers has a new leader and plans for a new name.
The company has recruited Oliver Wriedt, the former co-CEO of CIFC, as its new chief executive officer. Wriedt will take over the chief executive role that was held by one of DFG’s founders, chief investment officer Volkan Kurtas, according to a statement issued by the firm Thursday. Kurtas will retain his CIO role at the 13-year-old New York firm, which has $5.7 billion in assets under management and manages eight outstanding CLOs.
The company is also adopting a new brand, Vibrant, based on its parent company, Vibrant Capital Partners as well as the CLO platform it has utilized since 2013. The full name of the new Vibrant-branded shop is to be determined in the second half of the year, according to the release. DFG has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Vibrant since 2008.
In the statement, Wriedt said he has a “well established business relationship” with the firm’s three co-founders, Kurtas and fellow managing partners Moritz Hilf and Kimito Iwamoto.
Kurtas, in the same statement, lauded Wriedt’s “proven track record of building strong institutional businesses and fostering longstanding partnerships.”
Wriedt spent six years at CIFC, one of the largest CLO management firms in the U.S.. At the time of his depature last year, CIFC managed over 20 deals totaling approximately $18 billion (the firm now oversees about $21 billion in CLO assets). Before that he served as managing director of Providence Equity Partners.
In his new post, Wriedt will oversee a structured credit team that manages $1.7 billion in CLO investments, including debt, equity and derivatives, and a leveraged credit division that manages $4 billion in leveraged-loan assets held in the firm’s collateralized loan obligation and warehouse vehicles. DFG manages eight outstanding CLOs and has issued 10 since 2013. The $510.5 million Vibrant CLO X was the firm’s most recent deal, pricing last August. The manager has also priced three CLO refinancings and a single, upsized reset. Last year, the firm paid down its first two CLOs initially issued in 2013.
