Swashbuckling trading style that fuelled Hamza Lemssouguer’s rise has ensnared his firm in brutal sell-off in riskiest reaches of corporate debt markets. Hamza Lemssouguer’s penchant for large concentrated bets has fuelled four years of remarkable returns and rampant growth at Arini Capital Management. After launching with $1bn of capital in 2022, Arini — christened after the tribe of parrots the Moroccan-born trader famously breeds — now manages $22bn across different strategies. But in recent months Arini’s fortunes have turned and it’s now tied to a rout plaguing credit markets’ weakest borrowers. The flagship strategy of the London-based credit hedge fund is down over 26 per cent so far this year. Big bets it made on the debt of lower-rated companies including Patrick Drahi’s Altice International and luxury-car maker Aston Martin have deteriorated in recent months. A historic sell-off in low-rated credit in recent months has added to the pain. Facing margin calls from banks that lent money to increase its firepower, Arini has raised new capital for its main fund and has begun dumping large blocks of bonds in stressed companies. A person close to Arini insisted that it was “business as usual” for the firm, which regularly trades in and out of positions and is deploying the new money for several purposes. It has also told investors that it has previously rebounded from “periods of significant mark-to-market volatility”.
Arini swooped on the sprawling former London office of $1tn private-capital giant Apollo Global Management in June, agreeing to lease all eight floors and the basement of the 40,000-square-foot building a stone’s throw from Mayfair’s Hanover Square. Scheduled to move in next year, Arini will be hoping its woes have passed by then.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing