Astra Asset Management UK has an award-winning ten-year track record of generating lowly correlated double-digit returns. Since its founding in 2012, Astra AMCO has emerged as a leading European Alternative Credit Manager seeking to deliver sustained outperformance across all sectors and market cycles. Many investors – including the founders themselves – have entrusted their capital to the independently owned firm from the start in 2012. Astra Asset Management UK is proud to host alignment of in-house interest with investors and seeks to augment performance over AUM; “We want to be the best not the biggest. We take pride in analysis, and quality of returns, and do not have any external owners pushing us to raise assets,” says Anish Mathur, Astra. Maintaining a high safety margin, Astra Specialist Credit applies a rigorous investment process which combines deep fundamental credit and structural analysis with quantitative asset pricing and risk modelling.
Astra AMCO’s strength: The team, led by Anish Mathur
Astra AMCO was founded by Anish Mathur, who serves as the Chief Investment Officer of Astra Asset ManagementUK Limited. Anish Mathur is also a member of the Investment Management Team. Prior to Astra, Anish Mathur spent 7 years at Deutsche Bank as Head of Winchester Capital Principal Finance, where he was responsible for one of the largest cash and synthetic asset backed securities portfolios globally comprising a multi-billion-dollar pool of Asset Backed Securities (ABS) assets including US and European RMBS, CMBS, CLOs and CDOs in both cash and synthetic form.
Anish Mathur and several senior members of his team have been with Astra Asset Management since inception, and previously worked together at Deutsche Bank’s principal finance unit Winchester Capital which managed in aggregate over USD 20 billion; a mark of Astra AMCO’s investment experience across the entire asset-backed investment spectrum and network with the capability to source specialist credit risk.
During its 10-year journey, Astra AMCO has augmented its team, assembling one of the broadest, most experienced and seasoned teams in structured credit and Asset Backed Lending space, including a private debt and special situations team with capability to do private securitisations.
The flagship fund, Astra Specialist Credit Investments Limited, is managed by Shikha Gupta; named in 2022 as one of the 50 leading women in hedge funds. Astra AMCO’s flagship fund offers quarterly liquidity and under her stewardship has averaged 12% annualised returns over ten years (as of February 2023), private credit separately managed accounts have averaged an IRR of 19.56%.
Shikha Gupta: Carving out Astra AMCO’s Differentiated Investment Approach
Astra AMCO combines the specialist expertise of a boutique asset manager with the investment capabilities normally reserved for much larger institutions. Leveraging a combination of asset underwriting and in-house structuring expertise, Astra’s proprietary database of RMBS, CMBS, and CLOs has been an important source of edge, screening and flagging up key triggers and spotting investment opportunities.
Astra AMCO seeks deeper discounts and substantial arbitrages than a typical proprietary trading desk, partly because it prefers trades that do not need financial leverage to make double digit returns, though there can be some structural or embedded leverage.
Astra AMCO typically forages for value in less commonly trod segments. Anish Mathur says “We seek the best risk/reward in non-agency US mortgages and CDS, and non-agency European mortgages. We do collateral valuation analysis on underlying properties as well as the more difficult deep structural analysis of legal structures and covenants including hidden structural features,”.
Astra AMCO uses active management and activism mainly in mortgage-backed securities, and has performed better than the equity market since inception. Shikha Gupta has led several activist efforts; in structured credit constructive engagement and activism to enforce legal rights in documents is a collaborative and methodical process and the founders of the firm are happy to roll up their sleeves and get stuck into the nitty gritty of credit work.
Astra AMCO’s market outlook..
Astra Asset Management is concentrated on alpha but will make tactical and somewhat more beta-oriented wagers after big dislocations.
In 2023 the climate is opportune to roll out Astra AMCO’s dedicated private debt strategy. Astra sees asset backed lending in 2023 occupying the risk landscape which plays directly into our structuring acumen. This is partly because banks are approving fewer loans and because companies have freedom to offer senior lenders security against unencumbered assets precisely because covenants were loosened so far during the very long credit bull market that was arguably artificially extended by the Covid policy response.
As an active investor, Astra AMCO’s market positioning is based on its strong convictions. Astra’s is akin to a sniper’s view, honing in on specific opportunities that it feels will best complement, and be additive to, their private credit strategy. Today’s more challenging market environment could trigger a re-evaluation of exposure to active managers for investors who have migrated towards passive strategies over the last 10 years. When heightened volatility disrupts investor sentiment, it is apposite to turn to active managers who have a trained eye to execute on a targeted opportunity set, regardless of the wider market turmoil.
Astra Asset Management can opportunely structure deals with healthy over-collateralisation, perfected security, reduced legal risk and scope to swiftly resolve issues, as well as sometimes garnering upside optionality through equity participation.
