Oaktree Asia distress head relocates to Hong Kong

Urquidi joined Oaktree in 2005 and has overseen the development of its distressed debt investments outside the US. He will continue to manage the European business alongside Chris Boehringer, a managing director and co-head of distressed debt for Europe. Oaktree’s non-US distressed debt group currently has 24 investment professionals across London, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

As Oaktree’s first portfolio manager based full-time in Asia, Urquidi will expand the firm’s Asia Pacific platform and position Oaktree to capitalize on the region’s growing distress opportunity. The distressed debt group has invested more than $500 million over the last 12 months, mainly in China and India. Most of these investments were in real estate-related transactions, such as the purchase of several portfolios of non-performing loans (NPLs) in China backed by real estate assets in provinces along China’s eastern seaboard.

Oaktree sees China and India as offering the biggest opening for distress investors because of a growing willingness by authorities in both countries to reduce the burden of NPLs on the economy. In India, the introduction of a new bankruptcy code is seen as a major step toward lowering the protections for borrowers that have historically made asset recovery difficult.

The firm will also continue to make opportunistic investments in more developed economies in the region, such as Australia and Japan. Last year Oaktree agreed to extend a loan package worth around $36 million to Australia-based private equity firm Blue Sky Alternative Investments after Blue Sky confirmed a series of regulatory breaches related to wholesale private real estate and private equity funds.

Earlier this month Oaktree agreed to sell a 62% stake to Brookfield Asset Management in a deal worth about $4.7 billion. The combined company will have about $475 billion in assets under management globally, including about $42 billion in Asia. Brookfield and Oaktree will continue to operate their respective businesses and brands independently.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Credit/Special Situations
• GPs
• People
• Oaktree Capital
• Hong Kong (China)
• Distress
• China
• India