Marshall Wace agreed to acquire a majority stake in Eaglewood Capital Management, said a spokesman for the London-based alternative money manager.
The spokesman confirmed that Marshall Wace is taking a 90% stake in Eaglewood, a New York-based money management firm that specializes in online lending strategies.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The stake will be integrated with Marshall Wace’s existing peer-to-peer and online lending business assets to create MW Eaglewood Ltd. — a U.K.-based money manager of P2P and online lending investment strategies. The new entity will have Eaglewood and a newly created European business, Eaglewood Europe LLP, as subsidiaries.
Eaglewood Europe is awaiting regulatory approval from the Financial Conduct Authority. That subsidiary will become the investment manager of a new entity — an investment trust — that will be created and then listed on the London Stock Exchange, the spokesman said.
Marshall Wace said in a news release that it acts as the incubator for the nascent business in Europe, and that MW Eaglewood will have access to its systems, information technology, risk management, and portfolio construction and optimization.
MW Eaglewood will be run independently of Marshall Wace’s existing strategies, and will have its own management. Jonathan Barlow, founder, CEO and chief investment officer of Eaglewood, will become CEO of MW Eaglewood and retain a minority ownership stake. A second spokesman for Marshall Wace said all Eaglewood employees will be retained. Eaglewood will continue to run its existing strategies — which invest in loans — in New York.
Simon Champ, who joined Marshall Wace when the $18 billion manager bought a controlling interest in Exchange Associates (U.K.) from investment bank Liberum Capital last year, where he and his team continued to develop their P2P lending business, will become CEO of Eaglewood Europe. Steven Lee, portfolio manager and principal at Eaglewood, will become CIO of MW Eaglewood.
“We are delighted to contribute to the development of the P2P lending sector by bringing these businesses together to build and incubate a new, international P2P asset manager,” said Ian Wace, CEO of Marshall Wace, in the news release. “P2P lending has the potential to transform consumer and (small and medium enterprises) lending practices worldwide by disintermediating the banks.”
