Guardian Life acquires minority stake in HPS Investment Partners

Guardian Life announced Feb. 9 that it has acquired a minority stake in alternative asset manager HPS Investment Partners to build a strategic investment partnership between two regular issuers of broadly syndicated CLOs.

The partnership will expand Guardian's in-house investment platform and "offers the opportunity to co-develop bespoke investment strategies suitable for the insurance market," according to a press release from Guardian.

Guardian will also provide a "strategically important level of capital to invest and manage across a range of HPS' private-credit strategies," the release noted.

The release did not indicate if the arrangement impacts either firm's respective CLO management platforms. The companies declined further comment.

The sale adds to the roster of minority shareholders in HPS, which previously sold a nonvoting stake in the firm in 2018 to Dyal Capital Partners, a division of Neuberger Berman Group.

Guardian has issued seven CLOs since 2016, mostly through its Park Avenue Institutional Advisers LLC indirect subsidiary.

HPS, which manages $56 billion in private-credit assets, has sponsored 18 U.S. BSL CLO deals dating back to 2012 as both a J.P. Morgan Asset Management division, formerly known as Highbridge Principal Strategies, and an independent alternative asset management firm since 2016. The firm issued two CLOs in 2021, most recently a $507.4 million transaction via Nomura in November 2021.

HPS has also printed six European CLOs over the past four years through its Aqueduct shelf.