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AR Global’s BDCA Appoints Benefit Street as New Advisor, Budko and Weil Resign

Business Development Corporation of America, a publicly registered non-traded business development company sponsored by AR Global, appointed a Benefit Street Partners affiliate as its new external advisor, effective immediately.

As previously reported by The DI Wire, a Benefit Street affiliate, BSP Acquisition I, acquired all the outstanding interests of the company’s adviser, BDCA Adviser LLC. Benefit Street agreed to acquire $10 million of BDCA common stock, based on the net asset value per share at the close of the transaction. The board of directors unanimously approved Benefit Street as the new advisor, and stockholders approved the transaction at the company’s special meeting of stockholders on October 28th.

In connection with the closing, BDCA appointed Benefit Street president Richard Byrne as chairman and chief executive officer. In addition, the company’s stockholders elected Ronald Kramer to the board as an independent director.

Peter Budko and Edward Weil, Jr., who were affiliated with the company’s previous investment adviser, have resigned from the board. The board is now comprised of four independent directors and one interested director.

Corinne Pankovcin will continue in her role as chief financial officer and treasurer of BDCA. Nearly all of the previous adviser’s employees will join Benefit Street and will integrated into their platform.

“The board is confident that BDCA will benefit greatly from BSP’s existing infrastructure, relationships, and talented team members. We look forward to their contributions in origination, underwriting and portfolio management, which we expect will improve performance on a risk-adjusted basis and reduce operating expenses,” said Leslie Michelson, BDCA’s lead independent director. “This change will help position the company for a potential liquidity event at some point in the future. We would also like to thank Peter Budko, Michael Weil and our former management team, as well as its former adviser, AR Global, for their many contributions to BDCA.”

BDCA will continue to operate as a business development company under the same name, and stockholders will own the same amount and type of shares in BDCA.

Benefit Street is the credit investment arm of Providence Equity Partners and has more than $17 billion in assets under management. The firm co-sponsored the Griffin-Benefit Street Partners BDC, which closed earlier this year. Providence Equity Partners is a global private equity and credit investment firm with $50 billion in assets under management.

BDCA is a non-traded business development company that primarily invests in senior secured loans, and to a lesser extent, mezzanine loans, unsecured loans and equity of private middle-market companies. As of June 30, 2016, BDCA had $2.6 billion of total assets.

The company commenced its initial public offering in January 2011 and raised $1.9 billion before closing the offering in April 2015. The annualized yield for distributions was 7.78 percent based on its then public offering price of $11.15 per share.

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