Carlyle and North Bridge Announce Strategic Partnership to Provide Up to $1 Billion in C-PACE Financing

NEW YORK, Sept. 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Global investment firm Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG) today announced a strategic investment into North Bridge ESG LLC (“North Bridge”), a leading provider of real estate finance solutions, and a commitment to provide up to $1 billion to facilitate the origination of commercial property assessed clean energy (C-PACE) loans by North Bridge. This partnership leverages Carlyle’s strategic growth, real estate, and asset-backed finance expertise and enables North Bridge to address evolving market needs on a larger scale.

North Bridge provides C-PACE financing to institutional borrowers in major markets nationwide. C-PACE is a fixed-rate form of financing secured by local property assessments. As a private credit solution with flexible terms, C-PACE is increasingly sought after for its accretive benefits to commercial real estate capital stacks. The financing can be used for new construction projects, renovations, acquisitions, and retroactively for recapitalization opportunities.

“Carlyle’s $1B commitment to C-PACE, the largest to date, enables North Bridge to lead the transformation of the industry to better meet the needs of institutional sponsors and their lenders.” said Laura Rapaport, Founder and CEO of North Bridge. “We are excited to partner with Carlyle, an established leader in the private credit space, given their exceptional track record of partnering with companies to drive growth.”

“We are pleased to bring together Carlyle’s significant expertise in asset backed finance and real estate credit to help commercial real estate owners address their financing needs,” said Akhil Bansal, Head of Credit Strategic Solutions at Carlyle. “North Bridge has a proven capability to deliver C-PACE financing solutions of substantial size to borrowers and sponsors, and we are excited to partner with them to drive growth in an increasingly important financing market.”

“Our partnership with North Bridge, a leader in providing capital market solutions to commercial real estate owners, allows us to further meet the financing demands facing the industry,” said Rachel King, a principal focused on opportunistic real estate credit at Carlyle. “Banks have pulled back from commercial real estate lending due to concentration risk in the sector, resulting in a dynamic that we believe should yield attractive relative value opportunities for C-PACE lenders with capital to deploy today.”

This transaction was a joint effort between Carlyle’s Credit Strategic Solutions (“CSS”) and Private Credit teams.

CSS is a group within the Global Credit business focused on private fixed income and asset-backed investments. The highly experienced team leverages the knowledge, sourcing, structuring, and breadth of the entire Carlyle investment platform to deliver tailored asset-focused financing solutions to businesses, specialty finance companies, banks, asset managers, and other originators and owners of diversified pools of assets. CSS has deployed nearly $5 billion since 2021 and has roughly $7 billion in assets under management as of June 30th, 2024.

Within the private credit team, Carlyle’s Real Estate Credit Opportunities strategy focuses on directly originated, asset-specific commercial real estate lending, programmatic investing in real estate credit platforms, financing companies targeting real estate, and making real estate-linked investments.

Paul Hastings LLP served as legal advisor to Carlyle in connection with the transaction. Latham & Watkins LLP and Chapman and Cutler LLP served as legal advisors to North Bridge in connection with the transaction.

About Carlyle
Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG) is a global investment firm with deep industry expertise that deploys private capital across its business and conducts its operations through three business segments: Global Private Equity, Global Credit and Global Investment Solutions. With $435 billion of assets under management as of June 30, 2024, Carlyle’s purpose is to invest wisely and create value on behalf of its investors, portfolio companies and the communities in which we live and invest. Carlyle employs more than 2,200 people in 29 offices across four continents. Further information is available at www.carlyle.com. Follow Carlyle on X @OneCarlyle and LinkedIn at The Carlyle Group.

About North Bridge
North Bridge offers tailored C-PACE financing for new and recently completed projects across all commercial real estate asset classes nationwide. We have earned industry recognition for completing some of the largest and most innovative C-PACE projects to date by combining creative financial acumen with decades of real estate development expertise. The North Bridge team works closely with all stakeholders to design accretive credit solutions for institutional real estate projects. Our focus lies in optimizing capital stacks to achieve maximum efficiency, reduce cost of capital, and enhance long-term asset value for our clients. Further information is available at www.northbridgeops.com. Follow North Bridge on LinkedIn.

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SOURCE North Bridge