Staying Disciplined in a Competitive Market – Garrington’s Perspective on “The Battle for the Borrower” A recent piece by Matt Savino, Global Head of Capital Markets at The Carlyle Group, titled “Battle for the Borrower”, explored what the author sees as a growing rivalry between private credit lenders and the broadly syndicated loan (BSL) market. The article argues that as…
Tricolor – When Incentives Overrun Controls The bankruptcy of Tricolor Holdings has drawn global attention to subprime auto finance. Tricolor was a Dallas-based used car dealer and subprime auto lender serving borrowers with limited credit history. It operated at the intersection of retail car sales and consumer lending, a model that can blur incentives when sales and underwriting sit under…
First Brands – When Financing Signals Distress The recent bankruptcies of First Brands Group, a U.S.-based automotive parts manufacturer, and Tri-Color Holdings, a subprime auto lender headquartered in Dallas, have drawn global attention to the private credit and specialty finance markets. Both companies operated in sectors familiar to alternative lenders, and both collapsed amid allegations of irregular financing structures, poor…
When “Boring” Wins: Lessons From Recent Industry Bankruptcies The recent bankruptcies of Tri-Color and First Brands have caught investors’ attention and sparked questions about the health of certain corners of private credit. Both companies operated in areas that overlap with strategies often used in specialty finance, subprime auto lending, and factoring. On the surface, their collapses could be interpreted as…
Lender Finance, Revisited: A Portfolio Inside a Portfolio Some subjects are worth returning to. We’ve written about lender finance before, but like any good portfolio, the more you study it, the more it reveals. Lender finance is not just a sector in which we participate. It’s a strategy that continues to exemplify what we look for across our entire book…
What’s Beneath the Surface: A Closer Look at How We Lend Transparency is often promised but rarely practiced. At Garrington, we aim to be the exception not just because it’s good investor relations, but because we believe trust compounds, just like returns. In our latest investor call, we opened the curtain on some of the larger facilities within our portfolio.…
The Discipline Behind the Numbers: Why Stability Is the New Alpha Conventional wisdom says investing is all about compromise. If you want the upside of equities, you must live with volatility. If you want safety, you accept muted returns. But the past decade has shown that this isn’t the only path. As Warren Buffett wisely stated , “The first rule…
Reading The Ice, Funding With Foresight There’s something distinctly Canadian about tying business lessons back to hockey, and for us, it feels right at home. My dad always said, “The best offence is a good defence.” While I may have rolled my eyes when I was younger, that mindset is surprisingly helpful when thinking about how we approach lending. At…
Why Smaller Credit Platforms Can Do Big Things A case for precision, alignment, and the value of saying no. It’s easy to equate size with strength. In private credit, AUM headlines are often seen as a proxy for performance. Bigger funds, bigger teams, bigger raises, the story goes that scale is everything. But there’s a different story worth telling. Boutique…
Opening the Books: Highlights from Our Q2 Investor Call Transparency is more than a value; it is a practice. At Garrington, we host quarterly calls to open the books, share our thinking, and answer every question, because protecting capital is about more than strong numbers. It is about trust. During our Q2 call, our leadership team, Toreigh Stuart, Tammy Kemp,…
