We strongly believe that current market conditions present attractive opportunities for us to invest in small and middle-market companies.

Disruption and volatility in the credit markets over the last several years have reduced capital available to certain speciality finance companies and other capital providers, causing a reduction in competition. These market conditions may continue to create opportunities to achieve attractive risk-adjusted returns.

Commercial and investment banks have, in recent years, de-emphasized their service and product offerings to middle-market businesses in favour of lending to large corporate clients and managing capital markets transactions. In addition, these lenders are limited in their ability to underwrite and hold bank loans and high yield securities for middle-market issuers as they seek to meet existing and future regulatory capital requirements. These factors may result in opportunities for alternative funding sources to middle-market companies and therefore more new-issue market opportunities for us.                                                                                                                                   There is a lack of market participants that are willing to not only underwrite but also hold loans. As a result, we believe our ability to minimize syndication risk for a company seeking financing by being able to hold our loans without having to syndicate them is a competitive advantage. A large pool of un-invested private equity capital for middle-market businesses. We expect private equity firms will seek to leverage their investments by combining equity capital with senior secured loans and mezzanine debt from other sources such as us. The scheduled expirations of reinvestment periods for a significant amount of collateralized loan obligation vehicles may reduce the amount of funding available for larger middle-market businesses over time. A significant volume of senior secured debt is expected to come due over the next several years and, accordingly, we believe that the volume of new financing opportunities could remain strong as many companies seek to refinance this indebtedness. 

Nikolaos Biris

Chief Executive Officer, Director