Saba Capital Management said that the tender offers for shares in non-traded business development companies managed by Blue Owl Capital and Starwood Capital came in “below initial expectations.”
On Monday, Saba said that through the tenders, it was able to acquire about $10 million in aggregate face value across 190 separate trades, “substantially all” from SREIT. The tender for Blue Owl shares reportedly failed to garner more than 1% of what was offered.
The disinterest by investors in garnering liquidity at a steep discount comes amid a quarter that saw elevated redemptions across most private-credit, non-traded BDCs. Blue Owl was among the poster children of this phenomenon, halting quarterly redemptions in OBDC II in mid-February, and opting instead to return capital periodically through portfolio asset sales. In early April, investors sought to redeem $5.4 billion from two of its other private-credit funds during the first quarter. Like many of its peers, the fund manager opted to cap these requests at 5%.
In the wake of the OBDC II decision, Saba Capital’s Boaz Weinstein told CNBC that they were “hearing from investors in these funds that they wanted their money back,” which is why the firm saw a market opportunity. As such, Saba announced on Monday that it was “considering providing bids on a number of additional products, including the Cliffwater interval fund and Blue Owl’s OCIC.”
