Ralf Ackermann

Vertis Capital Partners at Vertis Capital Partners

Panellist

Ralf Ackermann is Co-Founder & Partner at Vertis Capital Partners. He has invested in European credit for over two decades, through every cycle since 2004 and three major dislocations: the GFC, the eurozone crisis and Covid.

He started in distressed debt at Goldman Sachs. He then spent a decade at Apollo Global Management as one of its first employees in Europe. He sat on the European Management Committee, invested through the GFC and went on to lead the Illiquid Opportunistic Credit strategy. Most recently he was a Partner at Searchlight Capital Partners, where he helped establish European opportunistic credit and oversaw European investing across two Searchlight Opportunities Funds.

Vertis focuses on the part of the market the large platforms have grown out of. It deploys €10-€100m into secured, asset-backed loans across Europe's lower mid-market with structural discipline. The team brings 50+ years of combined credit investing, structuring and restructuring experience, and underwrites every deal for the downside first.

Through its strategic partnership with DunPort Capital Management, a lower mid-market cash-flow lender with a 13-year track record across Ireland, the UK and the Benelux, Vertis covers both asset-backed and corporate credit. The wider platform includes Foundry Capital, a dedicated defence SME lender, and Henry Costa Partners, an insurance-focused merchant bank. The longer-term goal for Vertis is to build Europe's leading lower mid-market private credit platform.

Vertis publishes the Vertis Credit Observer, a public notebook on how the team thinks about credit. Its central argument: price signals in private markets are broken, and the lower mid-market is where disciplined lenders still get paid for the work.