Ben Brazil, who helped turn Macquarie Group Ltd.’s leasing and lending business into a major earnings driver, has built up almost $2 billion in funds to target distressed assets.
His company, FitzWalter Capital, raised $862 million in an initial fundraising phase for its second fund, a filing showed in late April. That’s taking assets under management for the London-based firm and its related entities to $1.9 billion, almost double from a year before.
Brazil, 51, declined to comment. He co-founded FitzWalter at the height of the Covid pandemic in late 2020 to target deals in distressed credit and business restructuring with Hayden Jones, a former Macquarie executive who headed the Australian bank’s North American real estate business.
FitzWalter’s funds rival some of those from larger firms. Apollo Global Management Inc. raised $2.4 billion in November to target dislocated credit investments, while Carlyle Group Inc. is looking to raise about $2 billion for a fund that will focus on high-yield private debt for infrastructure projects, people familiar with the matter said last month.
Brazil’s company joins a wave of money managers now piling into private markets as investors seek alternative sources of returns in an uncertain economic environment. BlackRock Inc. said last month investors including pension funds, family offices and insurers are set to boost allocations to private equity and private credit this year, despite recession fears and rising interest rates.
FitzWalter now has more than a dozen employees worldwide and ramped up its dealmaking in 2022, investing undisclosed sums in U.S. payments firm Onyx CenterSource and Italian sustainable energy company Peridot Solar. Earlier this year, it bought a utility connection business and electric charging point unit from Britain’s Nexus Infrastructure Plc for about £77 million (approximately $97 million).
Brazil was among Macquarie’s most successful bankers before his departure in 2019. Profits in the corporate asset and finance division surged during his tenure as it made use of extra liquidity in debt markets following the financial crisis. The unit had a portfolio totaling A$34.5 billion (about $23.1 billion) for the financial year ended March 2018, but Macquarie said in 2019 it would disband the business due to weaker performance.
Brazil, who joined Australia’s largest investment bank in 1994, earned more than $20 million there in the last decade, making him one of Macquarie’s highest-paid employees, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
