Aviva Investors’ Barry Fowler has been appointed managing director of alternative income to oversee the company’s push to combine its debt investment businesses.
The move will help bring together Aviva’s lending businesses across real estate, infrastructure, corporate and structured finance.
Fowler was previously head of corporate real estate lending.
Bringing the debt teams under one leader is part of an initiative to create new strategies to integrate investors interested in all of the subsectors and it is understood to be looking to raise a new fund that can invest accordingly.
The move by Aviva to create a broader real estate and infrastructure offering follows similar moves in the past year by AXA IM – Real Assets and Legal & General, which have combined their real estate and infrastructure teams.
Aviva is aiming to diversify its offering away from long-term, fixed-rate senior lending and wants to be able to offer bond issuances and shorter-term debt. It is also looking to finance sale-and-leaseback transactions, the interest from which matches Aviva’s long-term annuity liabilities.
Fowler has experience across a range of sectors, having spent 10 years with Bank of Scotland’s leveraged finance business managing existing deals and originating deals for larger UK private equity firms.
After Lloyds’ takeover of HBOS in 2009, he worked on deleveraging and restructuring the historic real estate portfolios that Lloyds had taken on.
Since joining Aviva in 2014, Fowler has helped grow the business into one of the top 12 lenders in UK real estate and a top-three alternatives lender.
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