Faes & Co's London hire is a distribution move

Michael Tschirley joins California-based Faes & Co from LendInvest, the British non-bank lender, to establish a permanent London presence and serve UK, European and offshore investors. The hire is the firm's first in the city, and its purpose says as much about strategy as the address does. Faes & Co told Alternative Credit Investor that the move follows sustained interest in its flagship US-focused Faes & Co Income Fund from investors in the UK and Europe.

Faes & Co was set up in 2022 by Christian Faes, a former LendInvest founder, and its Income Fund invests in real-estate bridging loans secured by first-mortgage residential property across the US. Tschirley's London role is to serve that fund's investors, and Faes is explicit about the pitch: "Investors are increasingly looking for opportunities outside of the UK, and a lot of that capital is heading to the US." He describes the appeal as a fixed targeted return backed by a conservative portfolio of US residential loans, with a Cayman Islands feeder fund for offshore investors.

On the facts reported, the London role is a capital-raising outpost rather than an origination desk, at least in its first edition: Tschirley is hired to serve investors, and the fund's assets sit on the other side of the Atlantic. The firm says it plans a permanent office, but the pitch stays trained on exporting capital into US residential collateral.

The play has company in US real-estate credit: BridgeInvest banked $612 million for an open-ended US real-estate credit fund late last month, as this publication reported. Faes & Co is younger and smaller, but its first London hire already sketches the same blueprint—US assets, European and offshore investors, and a structure built to make the distance between them easy to cross.

For Tschirley, the job is to prove that sustained European interest turns into commitments from a permanent London address. The office is the visible part; the only metric that matters is whether it becomes the fundraising engine Faes & Co intends.