Jay Kim, Credit Suisse's Marmite credit guy, said to leave Apollo vehicle
Jay Kim wasn't always liked at Credit Suisse, but people at the Swiss bank who were partial to him found him extremely palatable. That Marmite reputation may have followed Kim to ATLAS SP Partners, the credit firm fashioned out of Credit Suisse's former securitization platform and majority-owned by Apollo. - 18 months after joining ATLAS as chief executive, Kim is out again.
Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.
The reason for his disappearance is unclear. ATLAS didn't immediately respond to a request to comment. Nor did Kim. Multiple insiders confirmed his departure. It's thought that he may have been replaced by Carey Lathrop, Apollo's partner, COO and head of performing credit.
Fans of Kim say his departure is a shame. "He was a great leader and the best trade of his career was finding a way to move 150 of his Credit Suisse colleagues to a new job while most CS employees lost their jobs," says one former colleague who moved with him.
Kim was hired into Credit Suisse from Barclays in 2012 to run securitized products finance by Brian Chin. However, when Credit Suisse's securitized products group (SPG) spun out into ATLAS, some insiders suggested that Chin wasn't the best man to run it and claimed the SPG had already lost most of its best talent when Michael Dryden and others left for Sixth Street in 2022.
Kim isn't the only person to leave ATLAS. Jason O'Brien recently left in London to join PIMCO, Mike Santulli left for Nomura, and it's thought that Aleksandr Epshteyn recently left in New York for Blackstone, although this has not been confirmed. Lekith Lokesh is also thought to have left. Sources say several junior people in New York are understood to have been let go.
Last November, Kim gave a presentation suggesting his new job was going well. At ATLAS, Kim said he was surrounded by people he 'knew and loved' and that it was good to be "right at the core" of Apollo's asset backed credit strategy in an area of the market with "uncapped growth potential."
Other critical members of the Credit Suisse team who moved to ATLAS include Jon Claude Zucconi, Matthew Masso and Stephen Viscovich. It's thought that they are still there.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, WhatsApp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)
