This week we chat with Niels Bodenheim, senior director of debt research for bfinance. bfinance is an investment consultant that specializes in the implementation of investment strategy, including fund manager research and selection, customized portfolio design, monitoring and fee analysis.

Previously Niels was executive director at Mubadala GE Capital, the commercial finance joint venture owned by the Government of Abu Dhabi’s investment vehicle, Mubadala and General Electric.

The Lead Left: Niels, thanks for your time today. Your practice sits within private markets at your firm?

Niels Bodenheim: Yes. We have research teams within all asset classes. Ours sits within private markets. We’ve hired professionals with principal investing backgrounds. There’s been a huge amount of growth in private credit. I joined at the beginning of last year. My experience prior to that was primarily at GE Capital and Mubadala managing a collective book that was eventually sold to Apollo.

TLL: Could you describe bfinance? I’m not sure our readers are familiar with your firm.

NB: bfinance is a small organization, but it’s certainly not a new one. We’ve been in business for seventeen years with offices in Montreal, Sydney and four European offices. London is our headquarters. We’re building a footprint in the US, starting with an office in Chicago within the next six months.

We’ve been working with asset managers since 2000 and have clients in thirty countries. These include institutional investors of all sizes and types – pension funds, wealth managers, sovereign wealth firms, banks, etc. We’ve done over 800 searches and overseen over $150 billion in investments. That’s a meaningful contribution to the asset management world. We focus on implementation, monitoring, search and selection for investors, and on allocations.