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A Fund Built on Leveraged Credit
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Welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Monday, April 6. In today's briefing, credit investor Hamza Lemssouguer has built a $20 billion platform at Arini Capital, with bearish bets on leveraged software names paying off as “SaaSpocalypse” fears ripple through credit markets.
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Hamza Lemssouguer on his farm outside of London. PHOTO: Sandra Mickiewicz for WSJ
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He Turned Down Ken Griffin to Run His Own Fund. That Was $20 Billion Ago.
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In 2020, Hamza Lemssouguer received an offer to manage several billion dollars for hedge-fund titan Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel. He turned it down.
Now Lemssouguer manages $20 billion at his own hedge-fund firm. The 35-year-old launched Arini Capital with $1.3 billion and a reputation for bold bets in 2022 and has been the fastest-growing new hedge-fund manager since then, according to data-provider Hedge Fund Research.
A series of short bets made in the third quarter of 2025 on software companies including headhunter marketplace ZipRecruiter and IT-services provider Unisys initially failed to deliver. They kicked in early this year when fear of a “SaaSpocalypse” swept debt markets.
The firm is growing other businesses like collateralized loan obligations and private credit, which pay lower fees than hedge funds but can grow much bigger.
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What’s a Private-Credit Fund Worth When the Money Is Locked Up?
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Cliffwater’s flagship private-credit fund has seen a flood of redemption requests from investors looking to cash out their shares. It also owns stakes in other private-credit funds experiencing the same thing, including one managed by Blue Owl Capital.
That private-credit manager on Thursday said it was again limiting redemptions in one of its funds. The result is that investors looking for an exit will get less than a quarter of the money they are requesting.
This poses a multilayered problem for private-credit funds and investors in them. Namely, how much is a fund worth if you can’t get all your money out of it, and the fund, in turn, can’t get its own money out of another fund?
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Don’t Toss Junk Bonds Out With Private-Credit Debt
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Plenty of investors these days are jettisoning anything that seems risky from their portfolios. But things that look like junk may not be.
High-yield bonds, issued by companies with what are commonly called “junk” credit ratings, have been caught up in the same selloff that has ensnared other corporate credits this year. This has mostly involved loans to highly indebted companies, especially those made by private funds. But investors would be mistaken to lump these markets together.
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CEO Matt McAlear spoke of Chrysler’s minivan heritage. PHOTO: Scott Rossi for WSJ
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Chrysler, Once an American Icon, Now Sells Just One Minivan. Can It Survive?
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In recent days, the auto industry descended on New York to unveil its latest models. Nearly half a million people were expected to pass through the sprawling Javits Convention Center, from industry bigwigs to families just coming to ogle hundreds of new vehicles on display.
One auto chief executive, Matt McAlear, took the stage at the New York International Auto Show to make a bold declaration: “We’re here to make things people didn’t see coming.”
Behind that CEO was a pair of Chrysler Pacifica minivans—slightly altered with new headlamps and updated features, or what the auto industry calls a “refresh.” At most brands, such an update wouldn’t merit much fanfare. For Chrysler, however, a marginal refresh of the only model it sells was a welcome pulse check.
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Private-Equity Fundraising Falls to Slowest Pace in a Decade
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The private-equity industry’s fundraising slump continued in the first quarter amid turmoil in the private-credit and software markets and uncertainty over the war in Iran.
Private-equity firms globally raised $86 billion for buyout, growth and turnaround funds in the first three months of the year, putting the industry on pace to fall short even of last year’s disappointing total of $423.4 billion, data-tracking firm PitchBook said Friday.
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The Wall Street Dealmaker Charged With Solving Paul Weiss’s Identity Crisis
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When Paul Weiss leadership voted out its longtime chair, Brad Karp, it fell to the man he had wooed to the law firm years ago over dinners at Midtown Manhattan’s swanky Le Bernardin to deliver the news—and reveal he was Karp’s replacement.
For Scott Barshay, who has developed a reputation as one of the country’s most adept dealmakers, the coolly executed changing of the guard in February wasn’t too much of a stretch.
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