Marathon Asset Management has added to its senior investment team in credit as its CLO strategy surpasses $5 billion in assets.
Karen Lau joined the New York firm as managing director and senior portfolio manager within the Corporate Credit group and will join the firm’s performing credit Investment Committee.
Lau will work with Jonathon Siatkowski, head of CLO Structuring, alongside Marathon Partners Andrew Brady and Jason Friedman. Marathon’s CLO strategy couples a team of 14 focused investment professionals and five operations professionals with the full firm’s credit expertise, trading acumen, franchise, and structural knowledge.
Having been active in the CLO space for years she will focus on CLO portfolios and reports directly to Louis Hanover, chief investment officer of the $23 billion firm.
“Her expertise and knowledge in the CLO and leveraged loan space will be an excellent addition to our experienced global performing credit team,” said Hanover. “As a senior portfolio manager, Karen will be an especially valuable addition to our team as we seek to generate alpha for our clients by pursuing the growing range of investment opportunities across the CLO markets.”
Marathon has issued over $8 billion across seventeen CLO vehicles since 2005, not including its $400 million inaugural static CLO, which priced on July 14.
Lau joins from Onex Credit where she served as a Managing Director, Head of U.S. CLOs, managing over $10 billion of AUM across 20 funds, and member of the Par Loans & High Yield Investment Committee. Prior to Onex, she spent six years at TPG Institutional Credit Partners as co-head of portfolio strategy focused on portfolio construction, warehouse ramping, and portfolio optimization of the TICP CLOs.
Before TPG, she joined Blackstone Credit at the inception of their CLO business in the early 2000s, serving over 10 years as senior investment analyst.
“The firm’s strong risk culture, deep bench of talent, and firm-wide cross-collaboration has enabled us to navigate our CLOs across multiple cycles,” Lau said in a statement. “I look forward to continuing this strong heritage and delivering value to current as well as prospective CLO stakeholders.”
Meanwhile at Onex, Adrienne Dale-Burns replaced Lau when she departed Onex back in March. She joined from MidOcean, where she was a portfolio manager focused on CLOs.
