The team at alts shop in California is ramping up their mutual fund distribution efforts after hitting a big milestone.

Ingrid Margaret Kiefer Canyon Partners Partner, Co-Head of Global Business Development

Canyon Partners' River Canyon Total Return Bond Fund reached its five-year anniversary at the end of 2019. Watch for the Canyon team to boost distribution as they ponder adding other liquid products.

"We're definitely investing more, both in our internal team, as well as on agreements with some of the larger platforms," Ingrid Kiefer, partner and co-head of global business development, tells MFWire. "In the next couple of months, we'll have two or three of the largest bank platforms."

She notes that they didn't start building out their distribution strategy and team until the fund got its three-year track record, and that last year was the big growth year for the fund.

Canyon now has nearly $27 billion in AUM, mostly in private placements as well as distressed and event-driven fixed income. The River Canyon Total Return Bond Fund (Canyon's first, and so far only, mutual fund) now has $151 million in AUM. And the fund still has "a lot of ability to scale up," Kiefer says.

As for additional liquid products, the Canyon team has been "batting around" some ideas, Kiefer says. Whether or not to launch another traditional open-end mutual fund or a closed-end fund "is probably the biggest debate currently," she adds. And they're considering interval funds, too.

"That's something we are looking at internally and discussing," Kiefer says. 

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