Manager profile Flat Rock Global

Manager Profile

Shiloh Bates

Managing Director at Flat Rock Global

Flat Rock Global was founded in July 2017 by Bob Grunewald, Richard Petrocelli and Joshua Martinez as a new kind of alternative credit manager based on two pillars. The first was that their products would all have clear and distinct investment strategies that avoided strategy drift. The second was that everything would be accessible to registered investment advisors (RIAs) and the smaller investors they advise.

Grunewald was previously a co-founder of BDCA and Petrocelli was CFO of Saratoga Investment Corp., Fifth Street Finance Corp. and Fifth Street Senior Floating Rate Corp., so it was natural that a business development company (BDC) would be the first product launched in the form of Flat Rock Capital Corp.. In keeping with Flat Rock’s overall strategy, the BDC has a restrictive mandate, only making debt investments in senior-secured, first-lien loans.

It wasn’t long before Grunewald brought in his former BDCA colleague Shiloh Bates to run a CLO investment strategy, focused on CLO equity. The Flat Rock Opportunity Fund was launched in July 2018 as an interval fund that would again be accessible to their RIA network. Since then Flat Rock has become a notable investor in CLO equity, especially in middle-market CLOs.

A third (and so far final) strategy was launched in 2020 called Flat Rock Credit Partners. The new fund invests in public equities of third-party managed BDCs, and was set up to take advantage of growing dislocation in the BDC market. Flat Rock is an affiliate of the $500 billion fixed-income giant Western Asset.

Shiloh Bates

is a Managing Director at Flat Rock Global. Prior to joining Flat Rock Global in 2018, Mr. Bates was a Managing Director at Benefit Street Partners, where he worked on corporate acquisitions. Prior to joining Benefit Street Partners in 2016, Mr. Bates was the Head of Structured Products at BDCA Adviser, where he was responsible for investments in collateralized loan obligations (“CLOs”) and publicly traded business development companies (“BDCs”) as well as structuring the firm’s credit facilities. He has worked at several CLO managers including Canaras Capital Management, Four Corners Capital Management and ING Capital Advisors.

Mr. Bates began his career as an investment banker at First Union Securities.

Mr. Bates has invested over $1 billion in CLO securities and has been a frequent panelist at CLO industry conferences.

Mr. Bates received a Master of Statistics from Columbia University, a Master of Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago, a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Bachelor of Science from Virginia Tech. He also served in the U.S. Army Reserves Special Operations Command as a specialist for six years.

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