Pedestrians walk in front of the MetLife Building in New York.
MetLife Inc.’s asset management unit originated $15.7 billion in private placement debt and private structured credit last year, bringing its portfolio for the strategies to $102 billion.
The 2020 figure includes $9 billion in corporate deals, $3.7 billion in infrastructure transactions, and $3 billion in structured credit deals, according to a Thursday statement from MetLife Investment Management. It also consists of $3.6 billion in investments originated by the firm on behalf of third-party institutional clients.
MetLife Investment was among the many private lenders that stepped in to provide alternative financing to liquidity-strapped companies amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The firm put almost $4 billion to work in the strategies in March and April alone, according to the statement.
“We will continue to support issuers and investors with solutions that ensure they manage through the later stages of the pandemic, and we look forward to providing expansion capital for new opportunities as global economic growth resumes post-pandemic,” Nancy Mueller Handal, the firm’s head of private fixed income and alternatives, said in the statement.
Last year’s total is down roughly 5% from the $16.6 billion originated in 2019, according to the firm, which had about $660 billion of assets under management as of Dec. 31.