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Deutsche Bank’s former ANZ boss James McMurdo and ex Goldman Sachs MD Sean Walsh know there are fortunes to be made in the booming private credit sector. And they’ve drafted in a US merchant bank to light the way to the loot.

Street Talk can reveal McMurdo and Walsh’s Privatus Capital Partners has signed an agreement with New York’s BDT & MSD Partners, a high-net-worth advisory firm formed this year by the merger of two companies – one founded by ex Goldman Sachs investment banking vice chair Byron Trott, and the other an entity that has invested Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell’s billions since 2009.

Privatus is expected to set up an Australian “feeder fund” to funnel the Vaucluse and Toorak crowd into BDT & MSD’s private lending vehicles. Privatus’ team on Friday began mailing out fund-raising documents to potential backers, telling them the fund would be an open-ended vehicle and circumvent US taxation burdens.

Walsh was Goldman Sachs’ co-head of local financing group, and held a board seat at the Wall Street bank’s Australian board when he ‘retired’ in 2019. He had overseen some of the firm’s biggest deals including Medibank Private’s blockbuster $5.7 billion IPO in 2014.

His business partner, McMurdo climbed up the ladder from UBS’s head of industrials coverage to Deutsche Bank’s CEO for Australia and New Zealand and then its APAC head of corporate investment banking.

Both men enjoyed banking careers that other MDs could only dream of but in 2021 set up Privatus, perhaps recognising that tending to rich families’ investment needs is more lucrative – and less stressful – than advising ASX-listed large caps on M&A and raisings.

Read the full story tomorrow and more on the Street Talk page.

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• Yancoal Australia is shaping up as the lead contender for Anglo American’s Queensland coal auction, as suitors prepare to lob binding bids without any clarity on the crown jewel Grosvenor mine’s status after a fire.
• Mosaic Brands, owner of well-known clothing brands like Millers and Katies, collapsed into receivership on Monday.
• Marketing research for IPO hopeful Cuscal was mailed out overnight.

• Nearly 30,000 Australians working in finance have lost their jobs this year.
• One of the most powerful positions in corporate Australia, the $215 billion BHP chairmanship is up for grabs as Ken MacKenzie plans to retire.
• Indian food delivery giant Swiggy has slashed its IPO valuation to $US11.3 billion from the $US15 billion initial ask, Reuters reports. BlackRock and CPPIB will cornerstone it with a $US1.4 billion cheque.

Payments player and IPO hopeful Cuscal is worth $527 million to $656 million and better value than ASX-listed Tyro Payments and Smartpay, per marketing research published by Bank of America overnight.

Click here for the latest equity market wrap.