Special Situations

Our special situations strategy focuses on events in single-name corporates in Europe.

Events are defined as a hard corporate catalyst within the next 12 months.

The team is searching for pricing inefficiencies in under followed and under researched parts of the European High Yield credit market.

The goal is to create a concentrated, low beta portfolio of mispriced corporate situations (long or short).

The special situations team employ a fundamental, bottom up and value based investment approach, with an overlay of active trading while focusing on under researched or uncrowded situations.

The team’s experience means that they aim to get actively involved in catalysts and the driving of value creation.

Our special situations strategy focuses on events in single-name corporates in Europe.

Events are defined as a hard corporate catalyst within the next 12 months.

The team is searching for pricing inefficiencies in under followed and under researched parts of the European High Yield credit market.

The goal is to create a concentrated, low beta portfolio of mispriced corporate situations (long or short).

The special situations team employ a fundamental, bottom up and value based investment approach, with an overlay of active trading while focusing on under researched or uncrowded situations.

The team’s experience means that they aim to get actively involved in catalysts and the driving of value creation.

The team

Neil Servis

Chief Executive Officer

Serj Walia

Chief Investment Officer

Ralph Herrgott

Head of Special Situations

Piotr Ossowicz

Head of European Special Situations Research

Arun Parmar

Investment Analyst

Annie Koehli

Investment Analyst

Prior to founding Serone in 2009, Neil served as Head of the European Structured Credit Agency group at Morgan Stanley in London, European Head of CLOs at Citigroup and Director in the Structured Credit Derivatives group at JP Morgan Chase. Throughout his banking career, Neil was responsible for deal sourcing, structuring, and syndicating a variety of credit instruments across corporate and asset-backed securities, in both cash and derivative format. With over 30 years in the industry, Neil has built a highly extensive global network for sourcing and distribution.

Neil holds a BSc in Engineering in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Southampton University and an MA in Finance from the London Business School.

Serj has managed the Firm’s award-winning Flagship Fund since its inception in 2012. Ahead of this he built up a decade of buy-side experience at KBC Financial Products (KBCFP) in London. As Senior Portfolio Manager he was responsible for a multi-billion dollar CLO/CDO/ABS investments and trading portfolio, one of the largest in Europe. Prior to KBCFP, Serj held senior positions in structured finance and credit derivatives at Standard & Poor’s and Credit Suisse Financial Products.

Serj holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Birmingham and an MA in Finance from London Business School.

Ralph joined the Serone investment team in October 2018, successfully launching the European Special Situations Fund in April 2020. Prior to Serone, Ralph was a Partner and co-founder at Sothic Capital Management, a hedge fund focused on European Distressed Situations. He was responsible for circa one third of the assets and was the largest profit contributor for the firm. Before co-founding Sothic, Ralph was a Senior Analyst in the European Distressed Debt team at JP Morgan responsible for research.

Ralph holds a dual degree (Diplome des Grandes Ecoles & Diplom-Kaufmann) from ESCP Europe.

Piotr is Head of European Special Situations Research at Serone. He has 11 years of experience investing across the corporate capital structure in multiple European jurisdictions and sectors. Ahead of joining Serone, Piotr worked as a Senior Analyst at Ironshield Capital Management, specialising in European stressed and distressed credit and before which he was a part of the Leveraged Finance and Sponsors Group at Credit Suisse, where he focused on bond and loan origination. Previously, Piotr worked as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group.

Piotr holds an MBA, Finance Operations from The Wharton School and an MSc in Sociology and Psychology from the University of Warsaw.

Arun joined Serone in September 2018, spending two years as a Graduate Analyst within the Operations function before moving to the investment team. As an Investment Analyst within the Special Situations team Arun is responsible for the identification, analysis and evaluation of potential investments within European levered corporates and for monitoring of existing positions. Arun is also involved in market screening, portfolio analysis, execution of corporate actions and hedging activities in addition to working closely with the Structured team to develop synergies between the strategies.

Arun holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Exeter.

Annie joined Serone in March 2021 and is an Investment Analyst within the Special Situations team. Prior to Serone, Annabel spent two and a half years at Goldman Sachs in a trade support role within the Global Markets division.

Annie holds a BSc in Geography from the University of Oxford.