Mar. 19 at 6:56 PM
PickAlpha Midday:
Bloomberg reports Citi provided a £100M funding line to Interbridge Mortgages just as Paresh Raja’s MFS empire was spiraling toward collapse. The direct dollar risk may prove manageable, but the market issue is bigger: this is another reminder that the Raja/MFS story may be less about one failed lender and more about how far those funding relationships reached across the UK mortgage-credit ecosystem.
Tickers:
$C
Our view is this is a contagion-by-association headline. If more lenders and vehicles are shown to have overlapping exposure to Raja-linked entities, the market will keep widening the discount on UK private-credit and specialty-finance risk
MFS creditors have already alleged a shortfall above £1.3B tied to double-pledging and related-party issues, and Raja was later hit with a worldwide asset-freeze order. That backdrop is why even an indirect connection now matters.
