The latest mergers, acquisitions and other corporate actions in the wealth management sector.

New York-listed Ares Management Corp, which focuses on alternative investments, said that capital raised primarily through its wealth channel helped push the Ares European Strategic Income Fund (AESIF) direct lending fund over €2.2 billion ($2.05 billion) of assets in its first full year. 

AESIF was first available to individual investors in 2014, and has an open-ended structure. It is the inaugural offering in the Europe and Asia regions through the Ares Wealth Management Solutions (AWMS) platform.

The fund is designed to give a diversified portfolio largely comprising directly originated, senior secured floating rate loans to businesses in Western Europe. As of December 31, 2024, AESIF has been invested in more than 230 portfolio companies.

“We are proud to see significant interest from the wealth channel in our European direct lending strategy, which we have delivered to institutional investors since 2007,” Daniel Sinclair, partner in European direct lending, and Andrea Fernandez, head of product management and investor relations for European credit and corporate secondaries at Ares, said. 

AWMS – launched in 2021 – has scaled its wealth platform to deliver private markets access and education to financial advisors and their clients. AWMS has about 150 professionals located in offices throughout the US, Europe and Asia.

As of September 30, 2024, Ares Management Corp's global platform had around $464 billion of assets under management with operations across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East.