Realm builds structured credit team

Realm Investment House, the $4.7 billion fixed-income specialist, hired two new investment analysts to support ongoing growth and the recent launch of a new global fund.

First up, Thomas Kapellos joins the Realm's global structured credit team.

He is responsible for originations, analysis, modelling, and monitoring of collateralised loan obligations in both private warehousing and public markets.

Kapellos has worked in the alternative investment markets for over a decade, most recently leading the alternative investment function in CBA's Private Bank.

His title was senior manager of investment solutions.

He arrived there from Perpetual Investment Management's multi-manager investment team where he spent six years as a senior research analyst.

At the asset manager, he was primarily responsible for private credit and structured credit portfolios.

The second recruit Ivan Bagang is responsible for the bottom-up credit research, modelling and monitoring of mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities in both private and public markets.

Before joining the specialist boutique, Bagang was a quantitative analyst with the treasury team at Shift, an Australian SME lender.

Before that, he served as a settlements officer at Pepper Financial Group.

Realm's managing partner, Andrew Papageorgiou commented on the hires: "We are delighted to have Thomas and Ivan join the firm to support the growth of our structured credit teams," he said.

"Thomas brings unique experience to Realm having managed both RMBS and CLO investment processes, while Ivan brings valuable experience and a different perspective having worked within the treasury of an Australian non-bank lender'.

The hires come on the back of continued strong growth at Realm, and specifically in the RMBS and warehouse space.

While there have been new entrants in the space over the past few years, Realm has been an incumbent in this market for well over a decade, having built strong relationships with issuers through several market cycles.

Realm is now one of the largest players in the Australian market for public RMBS and warehousing.

The size of this market has grown substantially over the past few years, now worth well more than $120 billion.

Realm's Global High Income Fund was launched last November.