The people who decide
At first close an investor is underwriting the people who will build the loan book and the discipline they will apply to every loan before it is approved.
Four members
Two committees sit over the programme. The Credit Committee decides whether a loan is worth writing. The Investment Committee decides how the loan book is shaped.
Each member's role on the committees, and the experience behind it, is set out below.
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Simon Birch has originated, structured and placed Australian commercial mortgage and development finance for more than twenty years. He is the originating principal of the Fund and the architect of its lending proposition.
He is Managing Director of Sandridge Financial Solutions Pty Ltd, which has held Australian Credit Licence 392372 without interruption since 7 April 2011 and trades as Conscious Financial. He has been an ASIC credit representative under that licence continuously since the same date, credit representative number 000410902, carrying the same authorisations as the licensee.
Sandridge Securities stands independent of Conscious Financial and introduces commercial, development and residual stock borrowers to private funders. It sits at the point in the market the Fund is built to serve: sponsors with real assets and a defined exit, for whom the banks are too slow or too narrow. His earlier career ran through the principal Australian aggregation groups, including PLAN, FAST, Choice, Connective and AFG.
He has been sole director and company secretary of Auremont Funds Management Pty Ltd since 5 December 2022.
Brings: origination, borrower assessment and the security structuring judgement that decides whether a facility is worth writing.
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Surinder Agnihotri has spent more than twenty years in Australian residential and commercial finance distribution, and has built and sold a non-bank lender of his own.
He founded Australian Business Credit, a specialist non-bank established to serve borrowers the authorised deposit-taking institutions had stopped serving, and led it through to divestment. He then established Folio Financial Services, where he is Director and Chief Executive Officer, and he leads Tassie Home Loans.
That combination matters here for a specific reason. Building a non-bank from nothing teaches the cost of a credit decision taken badly, because the founder carries it. Running a distribution business teaches where loan flow actually comes from and what a borrower will accept. The Fund needs both, from someone who has done the work rather than reviewed it.
He holds a Certificate IV in Financial Services, a Diploma of Financial Services, RG 146 accreditation and a Diploma of Finance and Mortgage Broking Management.
Brings: distribution reach, product design and a lender's view of borrower quality.
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Allan Holmes is a Melbourne corporate adviser with a career in structured finance, debt procurement and restructuring, and the longest governance record of the four.
He is Managing Director of a corporate advisory firm advising on mergers and acquisitions, debt restructuring, project and structured finance, debt procurement and capital markets, with a client base running across government departments and government business enterprises, small and medium enterprises and multinational corporations, in insurance, financial services, manufacturing, mining and resources, film and television, and government major projects.
He was the founding director of Auremont Funds Management Pty Ltd, holding office from August 2021, and brings continuity from the Manager's formation. He has been a director of International Precious Metals Pty Ltd since 2014.
Restructuring work is the relevant experience. Every loan the Fund writes is underwritten against the exit, and Mr Holmes has spent a career on transactions where the first exit did not happen.
Brings: the restructuring view, the casting position on valuation and impairment, and the process discipline of a career adviser to government.
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Paul Brook is the Investment Committee's specialist in what happens when a loan stops performing. He has spent thirty years in banking and credit across Australia, the United Kingdom and Asia, and has worked at first hand through two financial crises.
He entered the National Australia Bank graduate programme in Melbourne in 1994 and advanced through business banking and private banking to Corporate Banking Manager, holding mid-market corporate relationships through the Asian financial crisis. He moved to Barclays Corporate Banking in London as Head of Sales for the Exelerate pilot, a first-of-its-kind subordinated working capital facility built to resolve liquidity constraints for companies and supply chains under stress.
From 2002 to 2004 he was Associate Director at Presidio Capital in Singapore, advising on the resolution of non-performing loans in India under the SARFAESI Act, then newly enacted and still being tested in the courts. He led recapitalisations and turnarounds of defaulted corporates, delivered out-of-court restructurings and creditor negotiations for Asset Reconstruction Company portfolios, and established legal precedent for foreign investment in Indian distressed assets. That is secured recovery in a jurisdiction which at the time had no effective bankruptcy regime standing behind it.
From 2004 to 2008 he was Senior Vice President in the Asia Special Situations Group at Lehman Brothers, originating proprietary high yield, distressed and special situations investments across Asia-Pacific. Nomura retained him through the integration that followed, as Managing Director, Fixed Income, running high yield trading and origination through the post-crisis period.
Since 2011 he has been Principal of Brook Capital Partenaires, and he is Chief Executive Officer of the PanEuro Group, the merchant banking house engaged to assist in establishing the Fund.
Brings: work-out, enforcement and recovery experience, and the view of a loan from the far end of its life.
The parties appointed to the programme
Auremont operates as Corporate Authorised Representative of the Licensee named below. The appointed parties and their roles are set out at Governance.