Arini Capital Management

Joseph Wahba is the founder and Chief Investment Officer and holds final authority over portfolio construction and risk limits. Wahba built the investment team primarily from his former Goldman Sachs European structured credit trading desk, where he was a managing director. The senior investment committee includes several of those ex-Goldman traders who have worked together since before the firm's 2019 launch.

Arini operates from the Dubai International Financial Centre, which provides a regulatory framework attractive to hedge fund managers serving Middle Eastern sovereign capital. The firm's anchor investor is a sovereign wealth fund that committed significant capital at launch. Dubai's DIFC allows the firm to sit closer to its capital base while maintaining the operational and legal infrastructure to trade European credit instruments through prime brokers in London and New York.

Arini runs a multi-strategy credit mandate that includes European structured credit, asset-backed securities, direct lending, and special situations. The firm historically focused on purchasing legacy securitizations and non-performing loan pools from European banks under regulatory pressure to deleverage. More recently, the firm has pivoted toward private credit origination as spread compression reduced distressed purchasing opportunities.

Arini invests primarily through a single commingled master fund that executes direct credit positions, not as a fund-of-funds allocator. The firm also manages separate accounts for at least one anchor sovereign investor. There is no public evidence that Arini makes LP commitments to third-party credit funds.

Arini has not publicly disclosed a current AUM figure. The firm launched in 2019 with approximately $5 billion in capital commitments, which made it one of the largest hedge fund launches in Europe that year. In 2023, Bloomberg reported the firm returned capital to its anchor investor, suggesting a materially smaller current asset base. Altss estimates the firm's current AUM in a range of $1.5 billion to $3 billion.

Arini has not publicly structured co-investment vehicles for external GPs. The firm operates as a principal credit investor sourcing its own deals, primarily through direct purchases of loan portfolios and structured instruments from European banks. The anchor sovereign capital relationship suggests some deals may involve parallel investment alongside that limited partner, but no formal co-investment program has been disclosed.

In 2023, Bloomberg reported that Arini returned a significant portion of capital to its sovereign wealth fund anchor investor as the opportunity set in European structured credit compressed. Spread tightening reduced the distressed-credit dislocation the firm was built to exploit. The firm has since shifted toward a lower gross exposure posture and is rebuilding its pipeline around private credit origination rather than secondary market distressed purchasing.