Former Raistone and LiquidX executive Mike Walker has launched Price Ridge Capital, a Florida-based firm that connects investors to mid-market corporates seeking working capital finance.
Officially launched last month, Florida-based Price Ridge originates and services both receivables and payables finance programmes, targeting companies with revenue of over US$20mn that would benefit from optimising their working capital.
The firm primarily works with private equity investors, originating programmes that unlock liquidity at their portfolio companies, with working capital finance assets distributed to private credit funds or banks.
Founder and chief executive Walker previously spent more than six years as chief technology officer at Raistone, and was also head of technology and operations at LiquidX. He said Price Ridge has placed two deals since its launch and is currently onboarding private equity operating partners.
“We see ourselves as the gasket between private equity portfolio companies and private credit,” he said.
“We can put a group of funds together for a deal, but provide a single interface to the corporate on the other side. That helps the corporate diversify their funding, so even if one fund pulls out, it’s not going to break down their whole programme.”
Walker said that when partnering with banks, Price Ridge will act as a sidecar facility, sitting alongside existing facilities “where a bank wants to assist a corporate but may have reached its limits or can’t do the deal at all”.
“With private equity, we are again second chair to their primary capital sources: limited partners and banks. We are a helpful tool when they want to deploy liquidity fast or with no impact to the capital stack,” he said. “We are focused on the middle-market private credit funds that have challenges originating or servicing accounts receivable or supply chain finance [programmes].”
The launch follows a turbulent period in the private credit market. Numerous funds have been forced to limit redemptions after a wave of requests from investors, in part due to concerns over exposure to certain sectors, rising default rates and incidents such as the First Brands scandal.
But for Walker, that negativity “is really limited to certain types of credit, like software, and there’s a massive market outside those newsworthy sectors where private credit is actively raising or deploying at scale”.
“We’re also excited to see there’s been more attention on risk management in the market lately,” he added.
“With every crisis you tend to see a rise in sophistication, and so even after something like First Brands there is a silver lining. In fact, many elements worked like they were supposed to, like trade credit insurance.
“We also don’t read about the unsung heroes in the risk management departments that steered firms around the First Brands risk. The underlying private credit infrastructure is solid and we remain very bullish on this space.”
