Leadenhall adds senior Life & Alt Credit originator, restructures team

Leadenhall Capital Partners LLP, the London headquartered insurance linked securities (ILS) and reinsurance related investments manager, has added senior resource to its Life and Alternative Credit team and restructured it.

The Life and Alternative Credit insurance-linked investing team at Leadenhall Capital Partners has been reorganised into three distinct units, all of which will report into CEO Luca Albertini.

First, a life and alternative credit Origination unit, which will be led by new hire Tom Spreutels who joins the team on January 6th.

Second, a life and alternative credit Portfolio Management Unit, which will be headed up by Craig Gillespie, Leadenhall’s Head of Life and Alternative Credit Portfolio Management.

Finally, a Credit Analysis and Control Unit, which will be headed by recent hire Phil Kane. This unit will be responsible for the assessment and monitoring of all direct and indirect credit exposure related to new investments made by the Life and Alternative Credit investing team. It will also perform regular monitoring of all investments made by the life insurance-linked securities (ILS) investments and alternative credit team.

Both Spreutels and Kane will also sit on Leadenhall’s relevant investment committees, while Brian Weatherholtz, a Managing Director of Leadenhall USA, has joined Leadenhall’s investment committee for life related business as well.

Spreutels joins Leadenhall as its new Head of Origination for the Life and Alternative Credit team. Previously he worked for 20 years at Citigroup where he acted as Co-Head of FIG Corporate Banking EMEA, and more recently at Deutsche Bank where he acted as Head of FIG Corporate Banking EMEA.

Kane has more than 20 years of banking, insurance, structuring and credit experience, gained while working at Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and most recently at Deutsche Bank.

Within this restructuring, Leadenhall is also saying goodbye to a long-term employee and a Deputy CIO, as Dan Knipe is to depart full-time working at the firm for a new venture, but is set to maintain connections to Leadenhall as well.

Knipe has spent more than a decade at Leadenhall, leading much of the life insurance and reinsurance linked investing business.

The company said that Knipe has agreed a transition plan with Leadenhall’s management and he is going to set up a new entity backed by a financial sponsor that will be engaged in high return lending activity outside of the traditional ILS asset management space.

Knipe will remain with Leadenhall in Q1 2020, after which he will continue to have close ties with Leadenhall through a formal cooperation framework on the existing portfolio and also on some future investments as well.

Luca Albertini, CEO of Leadenhall Capital Partners, commented, “We thank Dan for his hard work over the last ten years and for having created a team which can take the Life and Alternative Credit Business to the next stage of development. We look forward to our continued future cooperation with him and we wish him luck in his new entrepreneurial venture.

“We are delighted to welcome Phil and Tom to Leadenhall, who both will be a great complement to a strong team. The new organisation sets the base for Leadenhall’s sustainable growth in the exciting Life and Alternative Credit marketplace.”

Leadenhall’s Life and Alternative Credit investments team manages around $2.8 billion of assets currently, which includes life insurance and reinsurance related investments.

The division is a significant and growing contributor to the ILS fund manager’s overall more than $5.5 billion of insurance-linked securities (ILS) assets under management.

Hear from Leadenhall CEO Luca Albertini at our upcoming conference. Make sure you register soon for ILS NYC 2020 as tickets are selling fast!