In October, Blue Owl Capital Corporation announced the five-year anniversary of its investment in Wingspire Capital, a premier asset-backed direct lender that operates two business units, Wingspire Corporate Finance and Wingspire Equipment Finance.

Blue Owl Capital Corporation launched Wingspire in the fall of 2019 and has increased its support steadily since then. Since inception, Wingspire has closed over $4.5 billion in financing commitments. Wingspire has made its mark as a provider of a range of specialized asset-secured financing solutions, primarily focusing on the needs of middle- market businesses for bank-adjacent credit profiles.

The Secured Lender’s editor-in-chief sat down with David Wisen, founder & CEO of Wingspire Capital, to discuss Wingspire’s evolution and keys to success as well as his outlook for the future.

Please provide us with an overview of Wingspire including how it got started five years ago, its product offerings, and the highlights of your growth over the last five years.
Wingspire is a diversified commercial finance company focused on providing secured lending solutions to middle-market companies. We operate in two business units: Wingspire Corporate Finance, led by James Garlick, which provides revolving and asset-secured term loans; and Wingspire Equipment Finance, which is led by Eric Freeman and provides financing for the acquisition or refinancing of equipment. In both of the business units, we’re primarily focused on privately held middle-market companies here in the U.S.

At Wingspire Corporate Finance, we tend to look at opportunities between $20 million and $200 million, whereas Wingspire Equipment Finance typically offers smaller loans and leases, anywhere from $2 to $100 million. The average size loan at Wingspire Corporate Finance is about $50 million; the average size loan at Wingspire
Equipment Finance is around $4 or $5 million. In addition to providing traditional ABL revolvers, Wingspire Corporate Finance differentiates itself in the market by providing senior secured term loans and first-out credit solutions. In both groups we’re generalists, but from time to time we invest in certain industry-specific expertise. The most relevant example is our recent investment in healthcare finance. We brought aboard a few healthcare finance experts because we intend to do more healthcare loans.

We’re funded with equity from Blue Owl Capital Corp. (NYSE: OBDC) which is fantastic because they provide us with permanent capital. We supplement that with a variety of bank lines and capital markets fundings. Most notably, in 2024 we issued ABS bonds with our inaugural equipment finance asset-based securitization. That’ll be an important source of funding for us going forward.

As for our history, Wingspire was created in the fall of 2019. I knew at that point that asset managers were raising a lot more capital from institutional investors for direct lending. I’d spent my entire career in commercial finance, specifically non-bank secured lending, and I felt that we could create a different type of commercial finance company in this new world of asset managers.

The hallmarks of that original strategy were asset diversification and culture; multiple loan products off of a common platform to create a single brand with lower overhead; and the flexibility to do a couple of different things and thereby give us the opportunity to offer multiple products to our customers and grow in a measured way, not diving too deep into any one product. Another key was having a flat organizational structure and high-energy culture that would enable quick decisions and a continuous focus on our customers.

I met the founders of what was then called Owl Rock in the fall of 2018, and they liked the plan. They had similar views on risk and company culture. What was different about them, as compared to the other asset managers, was that they had the vision to think around the corner and the patience to invest in a startup. We were the only de novo startup that was ever created inside of a BDC. There are a few examples of BDCs or asset managers acquiring already established secured lending firms at premium prices, but I believe Wingspire is the only one of our peers that started de novo. That was a testament to Blue Owl’s forward thinking and innovative culture, and it turned out to be a tremendous success for them.

Since inception, Wingspire has sourced over $115 billion in loan opportunities, and we’ve closed over $4.5 billion in commitments. We have intentionally invested in creating a strong origination capability and we believe that is and will always be critical. We’re out there doing the hard work to identify proprietary deal flow, and a lot of our success starts with those efforts.

We were profitable after one year, and we’ve created a lot of enterprise value. Most important for me is the reputation that we’ve earned. This, of course, is a subjective thing, but based on the feedback that we’ve gotten, we seem to have created a brand that stands for creativity, responsiveness, and for doing what we say we will do. This reputation is authentic because it reflects our culture.

As an added bit of context, please remember that Wingspire was launched in November of 2019, and COVID started soon thereafter in March 2020. When COVID hit, we had one loan, ten people, and no office. Everything that we’ve accomplished since then, growing to about $1.5 billion in assets under management, building a team of over 50 people in three offices, that’s all since the start of COVID. Through the pandemic, through wars, through interest rate upheavals, and without one single place where we could all gather. We were able to do that because from day one we were focused on our work culture. That helped us through that early period of building, even though we were virtual.

I believe we are still in the early innings of Wingspire’s story. Our strategy of asset diversification and a high-energy culture that focuses on excellence, that delivers a product that the customers want — that’s timeless. And although we’re proud of what we’ve done, we are in no way satisfied and we think there’s a lot more to do.

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