Pengana announces CEO and CIO of private credit offering

Pengana Capital Group has welcomed two senior executives to lead its recently launched private credit business.

Nehemiah Richardson was named Pengana Credit’s managing director and chief executive, while Charles Finkelstein was appointed chief investment officer. 

Richardson’s experience included advising large financial institutions such as Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan. He’d spent nearly four years as general manager of corporate development and investor relations at Latitude Financial Services. 

Before that, he led mergers and acquisitions at Telstra and spent seven years at NAB as a general manager.

Richardson had also spent a year and a half as an executive director at JPMorgan. 

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He would be joined by Charles Finkelstein, a former treasurer of Citi Australia, who would oversee the management of Pengana Credit’s private credit manager portfolio, which recently saw $200 million in seed funding in a joint venture with Washington H Soul Pattinson (WHSP) to launch global private credit investment offerings for advised and direct retail investors, high-net-worth and family offices.

Finkelstein spent more than three decades at Citigroup, with the last 17 years at the helm as managing director and country treasurer for Citi Australia and head of G10 markets treasury Asia-Pacific.

Pengana Capital Group chief executive Russel Pillemer said he is thrilled to welcome such a calibre of talent to the firm. 

“We are delighted to have Nehemiah and Charles on board. They have established themselves as outstanding operators in banking and financial services, and their appointments speak volumes about the immense potential and scale of the opportunities in global private credit,” Pillemer said.

“Both Nehemiah and Charles have considerable private credit market expertise and are well-placed to drive Pengana Credit as a significant distributor and manager of best-of-breed global private credit opportunities.”

He added: “When combined with the previous commitment from our joint venture partners, Soul Patts, we’re incredibly excited to have brought this calibre of talent together.”

Richardson and Finkelstein both noted the growing prominence of private credit, which was poised to “explode as an asset class.”

Pengana Capital Group executive director Dean Weinbren, who leads the firm’s go-to-market strategies, agreed demand for credit investments had been strong. 

“Pengana Credit already has noteworthy demand from close investors who are eager to access the new private credit products. Currently, those investors are on a waiting list for first access, which is targeted to begin rollout in the next few months,” he said.