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The Access pool of the Local Government Pension Scheme has appointed Arcmont Asset Management and Golub Capital to manage senior secured direct lending mandates focussing on European and US markets, respectively.
Arcmont will get £200m to invest within the European mandate, while Golub Capital will manage the £150m US brief. The strategies will focus on middle market companies backed by private equity sponsors.
The pool, for 11 local authority schemes with £52bn, ran a competitive process in August last year through Apex Investment Advisory. Earlier this year, it revealed the appointments of Adams Street and HarbourVest for private equity. Last year, the pool hired Orchard Street for impact real estate, Legal & General for social affordable housing, Stafford Capital Partners and JP Morgan Asset Management for timber, Aviva Investors for long-lease property, and IFM Investors and JP Morgan for infrastructure.
Cllr Mark Kemp-Gee, who chairs the pool’s Joint Committee, said: “This allocation to senior direct lending marks the fourth phase of our private markets journey. We were highly impressed with the experience of both Arcmont and Golub Capital, and believe they are well placed to maximise the benefits of this asset class for our partner funds and members.”
The pool, currently governed by a Joint Committee and operated by Waystone Group as an authorised contractual scheme, revealed earlier this month that it is in the process of setting up a company to be authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, as demanded in central government proposals for how LGPS pools should be run.
Access has now said efforts are underway to develop the in-house investment team that will be responsible for portfolio management and oversight, having ruled out a merger with another pool.
Director of the Access Support Unit, Kevin McDonald, previously told mallowstreet that in-house management was not a “day one requirement” and would not be ready by the government deadline of March 2026, which was recently confirmed by pensions minister Torsten Bell.
Max Townshend, head of investment strategy at LPP Investments – the in-house management firm of pool Local Pension Partnership – said last week that not enough attention has been paid to the challenges of building internal portfolio management teams.
“It's not as simple as just buying and selling equities and fixed income. Liquidity oversight and having a best-in-class robust process for managing cash flow risk is a very valuable but complicated exercise,” he said.
