Castlelake, L.P. ("Castlelake"), a global alternative investment manager with approximately 17 years of experience investing in asset-rich opportunities, and Aequum Capital Founder, LLC ("Aequum"), a tech-enabled specialty finance lender, today announced a partnership establishing a new commercial lending platform for the origination and servicing of efficient senior asset-backed loans to small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S.

Aftermath means the consequences or aftereffects of a significant unpleasant event, like Covid-19. The financial system is going to experience this first-hand. No firm, whether it be bank or non-bank, will be left unscathed. The author is purposely writing this article now in order to predict that one of the many untold stories will be that the nation’s biggest banks were expecting the unexpected as it pertains to their middle-market C&I and ABL portfolios.  Clearly, no bank in the country could have imagined a complete shutdown based on a virus, but what they could and did imagine was a severe depression irrespective of the cause.  Not only were they expecting, but they were prepared in unexpected ways.  The same cannot be said for certain community and regional banks and BDCs, which might not have had the resources, scale or wherewithal to prepare.