Private Credit Partner Diligence
A private credit investor considering co-lending with a frontier-market bank needed an assessment of its standing, ownership and conduct. Reporting through staff, competitors and public institutions placed the risk in opacity and scale rather than in conduct.
A private credit investor preparing to co-lend alongside a foreign-owned bank in a frontier market required an assessment of the bank's standing, ownership, and conduct before committing. The bank was licensed and long established; its group published results; its principals had orthodox careers in international finance.
Networks across former and serving staff of the bank, its competitors, and the public institutions that banked with it established what the licence and the accounts did not. The bank was among the smallest in the market and had not grown since a change of ownership; its group's strategy ran through small, lightly regulated jurisdictions. Ownership sat with a holding company in a third country, and no local record showed its beneficial owners. Politically exposed clients were dealt with at management's discretion, and an earlier internal control failure had cost the bank a chief executive and a share of its depositors. But the principals were trusted by the authorities, no investigation had ever touched the bank or them, and its one local investment, in telecommunications infrastructure, was sound and well regarded.
The assessment placed the risk where it sat: in opacity and scale rather than in conduct.
The mandates below are drawn from hundreds of engagements over fifteen years, including work predating Periplus. Specific parties, jurisdictions and instructing firms are protected by confidentiality.