Qualitas secures additional $300m mandate

Qualitas has announced a commitment of up to $300 million from a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) for its existing Qualitas Diversified Credit Investments (QDCI) platform.

This represents ADIA's third commitment to QDCI and brings the total committed to $1.67 billion since ADIA's initial investment in August 2022.

The latest commitment will see $220 million activated immediately for deployment and the remaining $80 million is set to be activated at ADIA's discretion. Qualitas' co-investment in QDCI remains at $50 million.

The mandate has a wide investment scope, focusing on Australian commercial real estate private credit market and senior credit strategies.

"QDCI has performed well since inception and the pipeline continues to grow. This latest increase in commitment from ADIA demonstrates the depth of opportunities within the Australian commercial real estate private credit market and further evidences Qualitas' ability to attract, retain and grow our institutional investor base - a key differentiator in the current market," Qualitas managing director and co-founder Andrew Schwartz said.

In August 2022, Qualitas granted options to ADIA under which it may acquire up to 32.66 million new ordinary shares in Qualitas, representing up to 9.86% of issues equity on a fully diluted basis, if ADIA committed incremental investment mandates totalling up to $1.7 billion.

After this latest commitment, ADIA could now exercise those options in respect of up to around 29.3 million shares. The strike price is based on the volume-weighted average issue price of Qualitas shares, currently at $2.50 per share.

Qualitas said it would give no assurance that all or any of the options that are now exercisable will be exercised. Any options not exercised will expire on August 1.

This most recent announcement comes just one day after Qualitas announced it had secured its first commitment from a North American-based global institutional investor for $550 million.

The two mandates have brought Qualitas' committed funds under management to $8.9 billion.