Global credit specialist CIFC, which launched a European office in London last year, has completed the first phase of its UK research team recruitment with the appointment of its fourth analyst.

Senior Analyst Rinse Terpstra has joined from Chenavari Investment Managers where he worked as a senior investment analyst focusing on CLOs. He has more than 12 years of leveraged loan and high yield credit experience in Western and Central Eastern Europe as well as Turkey.

Analyst Zoltan Paller has joined from UBS where he focused on leveraged finance and direct lending opportunities in the EMEA region. Prior to UBS, he held positions in the Corporate Credit team of Morgan Stanley in Budapest and Fitch in London.

Analyst Max Elliott-Taylor has joined from Investcorp Credit Management in London where he was an associate in the credit research team investing in leveraged loans and high yield bonds for five years.

Analyst Alessandro Garello Cantoni has joined from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he worked for five years focusing on Italian and Iberian markets and later leveraged finance origination in the EMEA region.

Their hires follow the recruitment last year of Managing Directors Joshua Hughes and Dan Robinson to open the London office and start building out the team.

Head of European Marketing Joshua Hughes said: “CIFC has a strong footprint in the US alternative credit space and many of the team in New York have lots of experience themselves working in European markets, but they said when they launched in London that they would commit serious investment to this effort, with a team on the ground. These hires, complemented by the recruitment of compliance and administration support, show that the business is serious in its ambitions to establish a credible and meaningful presence in Europe for the long-term.”

European Chief Investment Officer Dan Robinson said: “Good research makes all the difference if you want to perform well in alternative credit markets, so building a strong and committed research team has always been a priority of the firm. We want to ensure that our European operations have the same rigour and expertise that institutional investors around the world associate with CIFC’s HQ team in the US.”

Since CIFC unveiled its European strategy in May last year it has launched a UCITS structured credit fund, which has $85 million AUM, and it just priced its debut European CLO, the €407.00 million CIFC European Funding CLO I, through Deutsche Bank.

CIFC is an alternative credit specialist with over $24 billion of AUM.