(Bloomberg) -- Gramercy Funds Management is working on more loans to emerging-market companies after raising $760 million for its third fund dedicated to private credit.
The investment management firm has already deployed about two-thirds of that money and is now closing deals in countries including Mexico, Turkey and Chile, according to partner and senior portfolio manager Gustavo Ferraro.
Private credit funds are increasingly stepping in as an alternative to borrowing on bond markets for emerging-market companies. Adding to the complications, Donald Trump’s presidential victory threatens to keep money locked into US assets, as traders bet his policies will result in high borrowing costs for longer.
“Messy markets tend to help us because a lot of the companies that go to public markets come to us,” Ferraro said in an interview from the firm’s headquarters in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Gramercy’s private credit arm, established in 2017, oversees more than $2 billion in investments and has closed more than 80 loans. Mexico, Turkey and Brazil have been some of its largest exposures from a country level, Ferraro said.
The firm, set up by emerging-market veteran Robert Koenigsberger in 1998, is looking past a judiciary overhaul that upended Mexico’s public markets as some say these changes risk hurting the economy.
“As we go there and speak to different people, we think it’s not an attempt of eliminating checks and balances,” Ferraro said. “We feel comfortable.”
This year, Gramercy closed a transaction with the controller of Peruvian zinc miner Volcan Compania Minera and a loan for a real estate firm in Costa Rica. It has also loaned to suppliers of Mexico’s state-run oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos.
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