Asset manager Pemberton has expanded its business to trade receivables and supply chain finance with the hire of Phil Ashdown as a partner and senior portfolio manager.

Ashdown will help the company develop investment strategies across trade receivables and supply chain finance for institutional investors, with overall responsibility for origination and portfolio management.

As such, he will help institutional investors get a foothold in a “largely unreachable market” that has historically been dominated by the banking community, explains Symon Drake-Brockman, managing partner of Pemberton.

“We believe there is an untapped opportunity in improving investors’ access to this complex market. Bringing Ashdown into Pemberton, with his extensive knowledge of payments and receivables financing, will enable us to do so,” he says.

Ashdown brings over 30 years of experience in commercial banking, portfolio management, leveraged finance and M&A advisory. Before taking up his new role, he was a founding investor and executive board director of Tungsten Corporation, a supply chain finance firm, where he helped carry out a successful IPO in 2013 as well as the company’s acquisition and integration of OB10, a global e-invoicing platform. Previously, Ashdown was portfolio manager at Altima Partners and head of leveraged finance and private equity coverage at ING in London.

Commenting on the new challenge, Ashdown says: “As global trade continues to expand, the demand for non-bank funding becomes ever greater. The prospect of building a platform to provide supply chain finance at a company of Pemberton’s calibre was deeply appealing.”