M&G rehires Duncan Batty to lead real estate finance; Triple Point lends £55m to Perch Group

M&G has rehired Duncan Batty to lead its real estate finance arm, which has more than £14bn deployed, and Triple Point has closed a £55m loan to Blackpool debt purchaser Perch Group inside a £400m package that already includes NatWest, Shawbrook and Paragon.

The two moves make the balance-sheet lending buildout visible at the talent and deal level: a specialist is re-installed atop an existing book, and a loan goes to a debt purchaser rather than a corporate borrower.

Batty spent 12 years at M&G, latterly as co-head of real estate finance, and returns from Revolut, where he led commercial real estate lending.

M&G is re-installing an executive who knows the £14bn-plus book, not hiring a newcomer to build from scratch. His Revolut role was also in commercial real estate lending, which makes the move a return to a business he knows.

Triple Point's £55m ticket to Perch Group shows the other side of the buildout: capital going to a debt purchaser rather than a corporate borrower.

Perch's existing lenders include NatWest, Hampshire Trust Bank, Shawbrook, Paragon Bank and Lloyds, so the £400m facility looks like a bank club that has added a non-bank lender, not one that has replaced the banks.

A debt purchaser typically holds portfolios of purchased obligations, which makes a loan to Perch closer to an asset-backed receivable facility than to a corporate cash-flow loan. Private credit managers have spent years competing for corporate cash-flow loans; this ticket is secured against a specialist's purchased book and sits alongside bank lenders that already know the credit.

Direct lenders are often described as alternatives to bank syndicates, but here the manager is a participant in one, entering through a £55m ticket within a £400m structure rather than a solo bilateral loan.

Taken together, the two moves point to managers allocating senior hires and capital to asset-backed and property lending at the same moment: M&G's hire points to real estate debt, Triple Point's loan to purchased receivables, and neither sits outside the banking system.

The M&G arm is a balance-sheet lender built over years, and the Triple Point ticket joins a bank group rather than replacing one.

Both the executive change and the deal closed on 7 October, PWD's tracking shows. The same-day timing is coincidence, but the direction is consistent: property and receivables, with banks still in the room. Whether that pattern widens remains open, because the two tickets are modest relative to the corporate direct lending market and one week's disclosures do not establish a trend. The next test is whether similar specialist hires and asset-backed loans follow.