Ex-Merrill Lynch exec Mark Devonshire receives $74m for distressed fund
mCapital, a special situations fund manager with operations in Europe and Asia, has raised EUR50 million ($74 million) of seed capital from LPs Advanced Capital and IMQubator.
The investment will specifically be housed in the mCapital European & Asian Special Situations Fund, which focuses on small-to-medium-sized distressed targets, with approximately 60% of the fund's corpus dedicated to Asia, according to global reports.
The former head of Merrill Lynch Hong Kong and London Principal Credit Group Mark Devonshire founded mCapital in February of this year, and the fund is further managed by Devonshire's former Merrill Lynch colleagues in Hong Kong, Amsterdam and London. According to mCapital's website, this is the first series of investments for the firm, and the fund anticipates a second close in June.
mCapital's backers are Italian fund of funds Advanced Capital and IMQubator, based in the Netherlands. According to the Financial Times, citing unnamed sources, mCapital targeted a $300 million raise in 2009 and hoped to draw in an additional $1 billion in following closes, aiming to appeal to LPs who saw a rise in distressed opportunities amid the financial crisis. However, the difficult economic environment stymied the flow of investment capital, and mCapital's anchor investor, Harbour Capital, shut down that year, the FT notes.
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